Witness Protection
by ShipperOfGayGirls
Summary: Anna just needs someone to tell her that she's not crazy; that all the impossible things that she has seen are real and she isn't just suffering from some prolonged hallucination. People can't control the elements, people can't have more than one body, people can't fly. People aren't able to do the things she's seen. Maybe that's the answer, though; maybe they're not people.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

 _Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. - Marcel Proust_

* * *

We were tied.

But really, a good rivalry is only good if it's well matched. Basketball had never been my forte. I lacked the necessary bodily aspects for athleticism, things like muscles and stamina. What I could do is attract attention by behaving as moronically as possible.

In other words, I was the mascot.

The Warren Wasps were the pride and joy of McCartney County, Wyoming. (AKA the middle of nowhere.) Being the mascot was a responsibility that I did not take lightly; every joke, move, or dance was carefully thought out through a distinct and clearly formatted process that I had designed specifically for my cause.

Dude, I'm just kidding. I wing it.

Don't think I'm disrespecting mascots, their job is just as hard as everyone else's. But I, personally, am _not_ a very good mascot. In fact, the only reason that I took the job of school mascot was for Elsa.

Another thing you should know: You'll hear me talking and thinking about Elsa. A _lot_.

But honestly, who could blame me? Her hair, and her eyes, how happy she gets when she shows everyone else up at AP Calculus, that too big sweater she wears that falls off her shoulder, and those cute little constellation freckles on her back that I -

Never mind.

Anyway, we were tied. 57 Wasps: 57 Stallions, 4th quarter, 42 seconds left. The gym was absolutely roaring with energy, not a single person sitting down, popcorn and soda flying everywhere, the high pitched squeal of shoes on the waxed court, the fight song blaring from the small pep band at every opportunity. I was bouncing up and down on my best friend, Kristoff's, shoulders screaming something about how #7 could shove that ball somewhere incredibly appropriate for a heated high school basketball game (I got kicked out of games pretty often). We were sitting in the student section which meant that, no matter how riled up the rest of the crowd was, we had to be even crazier, and the students did not take this responsibility lightly. Every once in a while a group of seniors would lead us in chants, basking in the boos it generated from the opposite side, the energy building within us all, the mania of the crowd reaching a crescendo. I glanced to the middle of the court.

Elsa was worried.

I could see it in the furrow of her brow, in the teeth biting her bottom lip, in the white skin of her fingers when it made contact with the ball. The behemoth of a girl guarding her was close enough that, if I was being honest, almost made me a bit jealous (I have a problem with that, though.)

The girl was massive, easily three times Elsa's size, and not afraid to use it to her advantage.

Suddenly Elsa cocked her head to the side, Her white blonde braid swinging wildly, almost as if she had heard something. She then ducked just as a girl who had been guarding near by jumped at the back of her head.

She shifted her body in some weird ass twisty motion that I had wanted to look up later because it was totally wicked.

The two girls collided with one another with a painful grunt, Elsa smoothly slipping out from in between them.

The crowd screamed, feet stomping on the stands to the same beat of the basketball, shouts echoing off the wooden floors and bouncing back at us over and over, only to be replaced with more noise, more movement, because if we couldn't play ourselves then we were going to be _loud_.

Elsa breathed deeply, took a step forward, and shot the ball.

There was a breathless moment of quiet in the gym, where it seemed that every single person held their breath at once, the suspense in the air heavy against my rapid pulse drumming loudly in my ears.

There was a clean swish and the ball sailed through the hoop with ease.

Nothing but net.

The gym exploded with movement and sound, the cacophony more deafening than anything I had ever heard. Elsa was being swamped with people rushing onto the court, her teammates running to bury her in a group hug. It was the most stupidly cliché thing I'd ever seen, but I couldn't stop grinning.

But then things start to get a little fuzzy.

I remember a scream. I remember there being two loud, ear splitting bangs that ricocheted off the walls and made Kristoff drop me to the ground. I remember the pain in my knee. I remember a man in black clothes shouting, and hundreds of people screaming, but not like before, there was no happiness or excitement in the shrieks that pierced the room now, growing and growing until it was one endless sound of panic. There was too much shoving, I couldn't see through the crush of bodies, pounding against one another and running to the exits, their feet slamming right next to where I lay on the ground. I remember a little girl crying.

Then I saw a gun.

Then things got _weird_.

I remember Kristoff shouting. In a different language. Which was weird because Kristoff sometimes had trouble with _english_. I heard him say Elsa's name. I remember the man's scarred face turning towards us. I remember how black his eyes looked.

I remember the gun pointing at us.

There were times in my life where I had felt panic.

When I lost my parents at the amusement park, when I wrecked my aunt's new car into a tree, when I snapped my wrist on the trampoline, when I first moved to this stupid school with these stupid people that didn't like me.

 _"You're snakebitten."_ My cousin had said to me when I cried to her in eighth grade about how horrible things happened to me all the time, and I didn't know why. _"That's it, Anna. You're just bad luck."_

Those times weren't like this.

This was pain and my heart beating fast enough that it made me feel faint and the steady knowledge that I was going to die.

And then the gun went off.

I was screaming, there was a terrible, burning pain in my upper arm, like nothing I had ever felt before, pinning me to the ground with the weight of the bullet, ripping through my skin and muscles. Blood quickly pooled, warm against my back.

I remember being somehow happy that my blood was warm, because it was so, so cold. The floor, the metal railing I had fallen against, the air, everything was freezing.

" _Anna!_ "

And then a bright orange orb sailed through the air nearly at the speed of light, and connected solidly with the side of the man's head, sending him tumbling into the side stands. I remember a lighter, more feminine shout, in the same language that Kristoff had spoken earlier. If I try to remember it now, it almost sounds Russian.

And then I saw Elsa.

I saw her running faster than I've ever seen a person run, her body shaking with fury. I saw her do a weird, twisty, somersault thing over the railing next to the court, that would have probably amazed me, had I not already been in shock. She landed solidly between the gunman now rising from the ground and me. There was no one in the way of her landing, and it slowly occurred to me that the gym had cleared, there was no one around, no one to help.

She turned and shot me a quick glance, our eyes locking for half a second. I saw her panic set in at the blood, the pain on my face. She was frantic, her body trembling and her arms twitching with adrenaline, with the urge to do _something_.

Then, just as quickly, something in her eyes shut down, the light dimming first, then snuffing out completely, the blue turning to burning chips of ice, her jaw set and clenched, fists trembling. She turned slowly toward the still dazed man, not once pausing in hesitation.

" _That was a mistake._ " Her voice came out a chilling growl, feral.

Inhuman.

Her stance shifted, crouched a little. She was standing directly in front of me.

I could see the man around Elsa's left leg.

I tried to keep my vision focused, I wanted it to be clear. I needed to get up.

I was really _really_ cold.

The man's eyes widened as he struggled to his feet, darting around the room for some reason.

Elsa made some kind of noise in the back of her throat; something entirely menacing and unidentifiable.

It was one of those kind of sounds that gives you a physical reaction, makes you shiver, your skin prick, the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It was an instinctual kind of feeling; I shifted away from Elsa, something deeper than any rational thought I could have possibly had in the moment telling me to _get away_.

I yelped when the movement shot an arrow of pain up my arm and into my chest, so fast and sharp that I couldn't breathe for a moment.

Elsa stiffened further at the sound, and I noticed that there was not a single part of her that showed any indication of fear, no weakness, no doubt, nothing.

She was confident, cocky even.

I think that it might have been the most sure I had ever seen her.

He raised his gun.

Right when I was about to scream, the weirdest thing of all happened.

There was a flash of blue, a small buzzing in my ears, and every trace of heat was sucked from the cavernous room, frost creeping steadily along the gym floor, the railing, the announcers stand. Thick ice formed around the man's hands and gun, shooting up and against the bridge of his nose so hard I heard the crack echo across the gym. His knees hit the ground and he cried out, just as a small splinter of ice shot through his chest. He collapsed, and immediately, ice froze over his limp form, quicker than I could blink.

Elsa was glowing light blue.

"Kristoff!"

Up until that moment I had almost completely forgotten about Kristoff, so riveted was I on Elsa and the armed man. The lumbering boy came into view in the very far corner of my eye. I hadn't even noticed him leave his place behind me. Something about his shape was strange, I felt like I couldn't look directly at him, he seemed blurry, and for half a second I swear, it looked there were two people standing side by side.

When I finally voiced that detail to someone they told me it was because of the gunshot, because I was experiencing trauma, because my brain was trying to make sense of what was happening. I wasn't so sure.

"All doors except the front, standard blue, H-Sit, directly southeast two miles." He puffed, spewing air like he had just run a marathon.

Elsa nodded.

There was a pause where the only thing that I could feel was the bullet hole, the only thing I could hear was my labored breathing; but I could see Elsa.

A sadness much deeper than anything I have ever felt settled in the eyes of the girl in front of me, resignation ground to dust again and again, her cold blue gaze finally, _finally_ directed at me.

" _Anna_."

Her voice caught, and a physical pain went through the center of my chest that had nothing to do with the gunshot wound. Her voice was desperate and pitched, broken in countless places. It sounded like she had glass in her throat.

She grabbed Kristoff around the neck and slung herself on his back as easily as I took a breath. Her legs locked around his waist and Kristoff held his forearms to the sky, as if something was going to fall on them. The blue glow surrounding Elsa left her head and shoulders to gather on her raised hand. The was a high pitched buzzing hum, Elsa shouted, and the man's body, now a boulder of ice, shot toward the ceiling, punching a large hole in the roof on its way with a massive shriek of jagged ice on groaning metal.

The gym was long empty, but I hadn't noticed the quiet. The hole let in the scream of sirens and shouts of a panicked mob beating a staccato against the walls, desperate to get in, now they realize they left someone behind.

" _Anna!_ " I heard Coach Harper screaming. "Anna Hart is still in there! The Wolf twins, we have to get in! How the hell could the doors be _locked_?!""

I had yet to move, prone on the floor where I had fallen. I saw Elsa's eyes sharpen, her head snapping harshly to the side as if someone had slapped her across the face.

" _Please_ , be safe." She whispered, but I felt it like a punch.

I remember screaming her name.

There were men outside, shouting about a ladder.

Then, before I could breathe, a flash of white, frigid air flew across the gym like a sandstorm, covering everything in snow, and Elsa and Kristoff shot through the hole in the ceiling like bottle rockets, flying as far as they could before they exploded.

My vision narrowed and faded; everything went black, and my head smacked against the ground with a resounding crack.

That was the last time I saw Elsa and Kristoff Wolf.

That is, until yesterday.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

* * *

 _Never was anything great achieved without danger. - Niccolo Machiavelli_

* * *

 ***THREE YEARS LATER***

"So, how do you feel you've come to terms with it?"

I sighed heavily through my nose. "Spectacularly."

"Anna, this is not a joke." My therapist snapped at me for the thousandth time. "I realize that trying for humor is a defense mechanism of yours, but-"

"What do you want me to say?" I cut her off, my glare turning from annoyed to pissed. "I've told you everything. It was the shittiest of shitty nights. I lost my two best friends to a psychotic kidnapper, ninja.." I waved my hand wildly for more descriptive terms. " ..thing! I apparently went crazy enough to 'not remember it the right way. I did hit my head after all.'" I cut her a sharp grin, my words cold and harsh, mocking the hundreds of sympathetically smiling doctors who weren't supposed to tell me that there was something wrong with me. "And my cousin convinced me that I should see a shrink, so I'm seeing you. Obviously you aren't good enough to fix me, huh doc? Better luck with your next _lunatic_ ," I spit the word. "and I'll see you later."

I roughly pulled my bag over my shoulder and stormed out of her office, slamming her door shut behind me. The patients in the waiting room jumped at the loud noise, but I paid them no attention; slamming my hand into the elevator button, but eventually taking the stairs, too impatient to wait.

The session had been a long one.

They always seemed long to me, but especially with this new woman.

I've had a few therapists over the years; it always ends the same way. They "recommend" me for someone "better suited to help me". No one is suited to help me, it seems. I've had a couple that almost helped, that almost got me to believe them, almost convinced me I might really _have_ imagined the whole thing.

But I always come to my senses in the end.

Because I am _not_ crazy. I know I'm not.

I know exactly what I saw.

Just because nobody believes me doesn't mean that it isn't true.

Not that I can really blame them for their doubt. I mean, it is pretty impossible; nobody can fly, or make it colder, or have weird ice powers, or keep these supernatural, unexplained powers from their best friend. Best friends don't just leave you behind, bleeding on the ground, and disappear off the face of the Earth.

Except that's kind of exactly what my best friends did to me.

But I've forgiven them, because I'm just _that_ great of a person.

Talking to those therapists wasn't helping me. I did what everyone said; I went in with an open mind and held nothing back. I always started at the beginning.

I met Elsa and Kristoff late in my sophomore year of high school.

I hadn't really had a lot of friends before. I mean, I guess if I'm being honest I didn't really have _any_ friends. I was kind of weird.

I _am_ kind of weird.

But that's beside the point.

Anyway, I met them when I was 15 years old. They were new; new kids kind of get a hard time pretty often. Especially when the new kids are.. off.

Not to say that there was anything wrong with Elsa or Kristoff. They were just kind of closed off, to themselves. They gave off a strange feeling. The same kind of feeling you get when you see a caged predator: temporarily controlled, but unfriendly. Dangerous. A feeling that screamed others were not welcome.

However, you should never underestimate the fool with a cause.

On the first week of their arrival we were in the lunchroom; I was sitting at a table with a collection of other people that didn't have friends, and thus always banded together in the common standing of loneliness. Elsa and Kristoff, not knowing the ways of Warren Public High School, decided to sit at the long lunch table in the back of the cafeteria, which is, unfortunately, right where many of the basketball players normally sit.

This is going to sound cliché, but at Warren, basketball players were untouchable. Our school was too small to have football, and didn't really have any support for baseball or soccer or any other sport or activity, so our basketball players were kings, and mutiny was intolerable. Not to mention the fact that most of them were seniors, and the fact that the two freaky new sophomores had the audacity to sit at their table was apparently galling. Now, if Jamie Bell (point guard, and previously stated fool with a cause) had decided to deviate from the norm, and not be a complete dick, he would have noticed that two people sitting on the farthest possible edge of his table would not have been an inconvenience in the slightest, considering no one even needed those seats in the first place.

But his dickishness, if anything, only seemed to increase when confronted with the twins.

I was a two tables down, too far away to hear clearly, but I sure as hell could see it, and Elsa filled in the blanks for me after a few days when I got up the nerve to ask.

Apparently Jamie said something along the lines of "The fat guy has to leave, but if blondie wants to chill with me then that's fine, as long as she recognizes the privilege." to the uproarious laughter of his fellow team members. There was a pause of complete silence. I remember Elsa putting a hand on Kristoff's shoulder. (I later learned it was to stop him from bashing Jamie's head against the table.) Then Elsa spun on her heel and drove her fist directly into Jamie's weak chin.

There was a lot of confusion after that, the lunchroom promptly descended into chaos.

Somewhere during the pushing and shouting I found myself beside Jamie where he had fallen on the ground.

I kicked him in the groin.

Before you judge me, you have to understand that Jamie Bell had given me crap since sixth grade, when I moved to this school. I will not apologize for not being an angel. I just took an opportunity where I saw it.

The problem was that other people had seen it as well.

I ended up sitting on the small benches outside of the principal's office, waiting for a punishment that, I felt, was completely undeserved.

I felt the bench shift as a small, thin figure sank down regally beside me.

I looked into the biggest, coldest blue eyes I had ever seen in my life. It felt exactly like looking at a frozen ocean. Massive, powerful, and bitingly cold.

"Hi."

The small word had popped out unheeded, and, on instinct, I slapped a hand over my mouth. Then, realizing how ridiculous I must look, quickly shoved my hand under my leg, in order to keep it from doing anything else stupid.

"I, uh-" I cleared my throat. The blonde girl cocked her head to the side curiously, looking very much like a puppy trying to decide if the doorbell came from the TV or the door.

 _Well, that was really fucking cute._

"Um I- I'm Anna Hart." I stuck my hand out to shake.

The girl dropped her gaze to my hand and studied it, but did not shake. After a moment I curled my hand into a fist and dropped it to my knee. The fact that there was only one bench outside of the office meant that the blonde girl and I had to sit uncomfortably close for complete strangers, unless one of us offered to sit on the floor. It was made worse that the girl _would not stop staring at me_. I felt the need to fill the tense silence, which was a big mistake on my part.

"So, um, you're new here, right? I mean, I guess that's kind of obvious, being a small school and everything. We don't get a surplus of new kids. It's not so bad here, honestly, you just have to avoid Jamie Bell, Dillon Marks, and Stephanie Ramirez; those three are bad news. I mean, you obviously know that already with Jamie. I just thought I should give you a head's up about the others- not that you need it or anything. Like, I'm sure you and your brother can look after yourselves. You both seem nice by the way. I mean, from what I've seen. Not that I've seen a lot- obviously, I mean, I-"

"I'm Elsa Wolf."

The girl's voice was as clear and sweet as a bell, smoothly cutting off my humiliation with a small, polite smile.

"It is nice to meet you, Anna."

I had to suppress a small shiver at the sound of my name coming from her. She sounded better than anyone else when they said it. Maybe it was something with the way she pronounced it, with a small upward inflection on the second syllable, or the fact that there was something slightly strange about the way she spoke, almost as if she was struggling against an accent or something (though Elsa assured me that she was born in the Midwestern US, and did not know any other languages); either way it was great. I had to consciously stop myself from asking her to say it again.

"Uh, yea." I cleared my throat again. "Elsa." She smiled when I said it. "That's a pretty name."

She laughed a little bit, covering her mouth with her fingers. "Thank you."

"You're gorgeous."

There was a silence so profound I could have suffocated in it, had I been able to breathe at all.

"W-wait- _what?!_ " My voice squeaked out about three octaves too high. "I mean- I- I did _not_ mean to say that!"

My face promptly drained of all blood when her eyebrows drew up in what I swear was the slightest amount of hurt.

"No, no, no, no!" I waved my hands wildly in front of my face, startling Elsa into the back of the bench. "Not- That came out wrong! I- I just mean- I didn't mean to say that out loud. I- I had every intention of _thinking_ it-"

There was another beat of silence. Elsa looked like she was fighting a smile.

I smacked a hand over my eyes and leaned into the back of the bench. "Never mind. Please ignore me."

There was a long minute where I thought Elsa probably would take my advice; it definitely made sense for her to. However, after a long pause, I felt thin, cool fingers barely gripping my wrist, holding it almost as if it was a dirty tissue, and pulling my hand away from my face.

Elsa pulled away the very _second_ she was able to stop touching me (I tried not to let that hurt my feelings) but then she grinned at me. A large, lopsided grin that spoke of mischief and sent a small shiver down my spine. It completely obliterated the proper and regal image she had previously put off.

She just smiled wider when I finally met her gaze. "No."

"What?"

She shook her head, her grin never faltering. "I think that my brother would be very amused by you, Anna."

I rolled my eyes, grudgingly smiling back at her. "Happy to be of service."

From that point on Elsa, Kristoff and I were practically inseparable. I stayed at their house constantly, we had nearly every class together, every activity we took up was one we could all participate in; eventually people started referring to us as 'The Triplets', instead of 'Anna and the Twins', though I looked nothing like the blondes. It did take a few weeks for all of us to completely be comfortable with one another. Well, if I'm being honest, Kristoff was completely fine with me the second he heard what I had been sent to the office for. It was Elsa and I that had some adjusting to do.

I'm nearly positive she knew about my crush on her. I was never exactly subtle about it, and Elsa was exceptionally bright, but she never acknowledged it besides rare occasions where a different Elsa would emerge for brief moments; an Elsa that was confident, seductive, alluring, regal and superior in a way that was the single _sexiest_ thing I've ever encountered. It was these moments where I realized just how devastatingly attracted I was to her; there was no helping it. These were the moments where she teased me with small bursts on random skin to skin contact that would make my breath catch and cause her to smirk at me, where she whispered much closer to my ear than necessary, where she'd verbally stake her claim over me, joking in a faux dramatic declaration about how I was to be "Hers, and hers alone for as long as we live" but leaving enough genuine possessiveness in her gaze that it made me to blush all the way to the tips of my ears.

But Elsa was strange; every time something along those lines would happen she would draw into herself, sometimes even going so far as to give me the cold shoulder for a few days. The first time it happened it scared me enough to back way off. I was perfectly content with being her friend; ecstatic actually. But it seemed that the only thing weaker then my physical strength was my strength of will; I just couldn't stop myself from liking Elsa, it was like asking me to stop breathing.

I sighed.

I miss them so much, sometimes. All the time.

I was abruptly brought back to the present by a rather large rain drop hitting me square in the eye, and found myself on the familiar street, seven flights down from my therapist's office. I often did that, space out for a while and let my body go on autopilot, get lost in memories that I had no business thinking about. That's what therapy always did; pretended that it was going to help me; somehow make me forget, and then brings up the past more than any other goddamn thing in my life. I can forget much more easily if I don't go to therapy, that's what I tell my cousin, and my doctors, and pretty much everyone. I can pretend it never happened, and slowly it kind of seems like I'm right, maybe it didn't happen, maybe I imagined the twins, and that basketball game, and the entire messy event; I can almost make myself believe that. I just need more time.

While I walked along, my mind a mess of angry insults still aimed mostly at my therapist, I felt a strange sensation run up my spine. The same feeling you get when you're playing hide and seek as a kid; when you know they're about to find you, and you can't move, can't breathe, can only be silent with undeniable fear and excitement.

I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was following me.

One thing you should know, I'm about the farthest thing from paranoid you can find. It was always one part of my psychiatric evaluation that seemed to baffle my therapists; every one of them expected me to be nearly incapacitated with fear of the shooter, always on guard unless he came back. When I tried to explain to them how I _knew_ he was dead, how I _saw_ him die, I always greeted with sympathetic glances, and gentle reminders that "We have to try and keep reality separated from the trauma, okay?"

But I knew the truth, I didn't have anything to worry about. If I was sure of one single thing that happened that day, it's that Elsa killed that man. She was glowing with the intention of it, she had _wanted_ to. And I don't doubt for a second that if Elsa wanted someone dead, they'd be that way. So, when I get a strange feeling, the kind of instinct that whispers something is wrong, I normally shrug it off.

The only thing was it had been happening kind of often lately.

Seeing that man stare at me while I walked out of the grocery store, that woman casually following me to my apartment building after I got off work, her eyes following my every movement, a tall man leering at my car when I leave my cousin's house. All during the last couple of months this had been happening. I hadn't told anyone, I didn't want to come off as crazy and worry my cousin even more about me, but I wasn't stupid. I can tell when people are paying just a little bit too much attention to me, and the fact that these watchers seemed to know my schedule frightened me more than I wanted to admit. Last week I got scared enough that I called the police and told them I thought I was being stalked; the lackluster response I got was all the incentive I needed to give up in that endeavor.

I stopped in my tracks and studied the nearly empty street I was walking down. The only people were two homeless men in the alcove of a closed up shop, and a harrowed looking woman walking briskly down the opposite side of the street, muttering loudly to herself. Just as I was about to dismiss my fears and continue on my way home something caught my eye.

In the alleyway directly to my left someone was leaning casually against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette, and staring intensely at me. I made eye contact with the gaze underneath the hood of the jacket. There was a small puff of smoke and the figure dropped the cigarette, stomping it under the heel of their boot, and shrugged their shoulder off the wall, slowly making their way out of the ally toward me. When the figure stepped out into the street light I could clearly see that it was a man, with the stature of an ox and a mean glare to accompany it.

I froze, staring at him, trying to figure out whether or not I should be as scared as I was.

Then he grinned at me.

I quickly ducked my head and continued walking, albeit faster than normal. The man never sped up, but did continue after me, like he had all the time in the world.

"Okay, calm down, calm down, it's okay. You'll be okay." I muttered quietly and gripped my hand around the pepper spray bottle hanging from my lanyard. The inside of my stomach felt like it was coated in ice, dread slowly flowing all the way to my fingertips. "You've got this, be prepared, you're safe."

Those stupid tips from that Personal Safety class my cousin made me go to buzzed around my head, dinging off parts of my brain that made it impossible to actually remember any of it, just enough to let me know how useless I was when filled with panic. My apartment complex was two blocks farther south, and then one street over; I could make it, I could _definitely_ make it.

I chanced a quick glance behind me. The man was still walking, somehow even closer to me than he was before. I had about seven different instincts telling me to forget my pride and just take off in a dead sprint. I was in varsity track; no way he would catch me.

But a larger part of me (a much stupider part) adamantly refused to take off running just because some dude was walking behind me, in the same general direction.

 _You're fine._ I took a deep breath. _You're overreacting._

I tried to look back again, but my coordination had been all used up for the day, and my spectacular ability for tripping over literally nothing returned to me with a vengeance.

I rocketed up from the wet sidewalk, my head whipping from side to side, fists raised and ready, sure that by now the man must be nearly right on top of me.

Except he wasn't.

My heartbeat drummed loudly against my ears, my muscles tensed, coiling to into tight springs, ready to release every pent up drop of adrenaline, waiting for the man to step out from the dark corner he was hiding in. I searched both sides of the street feverishly, even going so far as to run down three different alleys, checking behind dumpsters and old piled up boxes and crates, which is really really dumb because I was ready to run for my life not five minutes ago, so actively looking for the man was probably not a very good idea, but it ended up being pointless anyway.

He had vanished.

"You ain't gonna find what you lookin' for, sugar." I jumped at the quiet voice, not having seen the elderly homeless woman sleeping in an old refrigerator box that I hadn't thought to look inside of. "See, whatchu's chasin is The Boogeyman."

She paused to grin at me, showing several missing teeth. "And ain't no soul from Heaven or Hell gonna catch that sumbitch. He leaves with the smoke. 'Till you learn to _see_ whatchu lookin' for, yous wastin' your time."

She cackled loudly as I huffed and stomped down the alleyway, back to the street. I wanted to go home; I needed some chocolate.

"Betta' watch that pretty backside, girl!" The woman called after me down the street, her wheezing cackle not letting up in the slightest. "Children ain't got no business chasin' ghosts!"

"Stupid woman." I muttered to myself while stomping heavily down the street in anger, probably looking a bit deranged to passersby.

When I finally made it to my shitty apartment complex and hauled myself up the four flights of stairs (The elevator hadn't worked since long before I moved in.) I nearly collapsed against my door in gratitude, quickly unlocking it and falling heavily onto my kitchen floor. After a moment of deliberation I decided that it was just as nice as anywhere else, and curled up in the middle of the floor, taking deep, heavy breaths for a few moments.

I was rattled. I would never admit it out loud because the last thing I needed was for a therapist or friend to have one _more_ thing to watch me for, but it was true. It had been a long day, and now all I wanted with to watch a few episodes of Grey's Anatomy and eat some of my emergency chocolate in the back of my fridge.

I yanked myself up, using the kitchen counter as leverage, and just grinned for a second, looking around my little home, trying my best to leave all the stress and fear from the last few hours right outside my front door.

When I say my apartment is tiny, I mean _tiny_. Like, except for the bathroom, everything is in one room. I have a big sliding wooden door that's pocketed with random, small glass portions (kind of making the door itself a bit useless given it's intended purpose of blocking me from sight) on the far side of my living/dining room that my friend/neighbor Olaf help me set up. It blocks my bed, and that's literally it, but I lovingly call it my bedroom. The far wall that faces the street has a massive window that leads out to my fire escape where I have a bunch of potted flowers and a bean bag chair (The landlord stopped asking me to keep it clear when I walked through the entrance with my fourth small cactus). I've donned the fire escape my "chill zone" and if I ever had to use it to escape an actual fire I still feel like it would be my favorite place in the world. In other words, I've completely embraced the romanticized shitty-New-York-hovel, and I refuse to apologize for it. I love my apartment, I appreciate it's shittiness; and often times I will come home and just sit for a minute, reveling in my ownership of this place, and loving every strange quirk I find here. Many people would probably disagree with me, but what do they know?

I took two steps into my living room before it hit me.

My lights were on.

So was my TV.

And there was a large blond head poking up from the top of my couch, barely visible over the plush cushions.

"Hey, princess."

My breath caught in my throat, my palms started to sweat, my heartbeat drummed in my ears a violent symbol crash, shattering any possible cognitive ability I had previously held because I couldn't _think_.

" _Impossible_." I breathed.

The head shifted, turned to face me, and the weight of an anvil crashed against my rib cage, immediately bringing tears to my eyes, because this could _not_ be happening.

"K-Kristoff?" My voice cracked. He grinned widely at me.

"Anna." He lifted a tube in his hands a waved it a little over his head. "You're out of Pringles."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hi, to anyone that might be reading this! At this point, it's probably kinda clear that I don't really know how to work this website very well, as well as this being my first attempt at writing any sort of fanfiction, but I'm trying to muddle through. Anyway, I've got some pretty cool plans for this story, I think it might turn out good in the end, so anyone who might be reading this and enjoying it, thank you so much! Also, I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors that y'all might see, it's kind of hard for me to find them after I've read over it like a thousand times, my bad, I'll try to get better at not leaving so many. Also, to people who have been on here for a long ass time, and know how to maneuver this site, please be patient with me, I'm trying to figure it out as fast as I can haha

Tips are super helpful if y'all wanna tell me where I can improve or things I'm doing wrong, that would be awesome! Just please be nice to me, as I said this is my first one, and it might get better with time, we'll just have to wait and see. Thank you guys!

-AJ


	3. Chapter 2

**Warning:** Hey, just wanted to let everyone know before they start reading that this chapter will contain a small description of a panic attack, and some implications of murder and/or violence, so in case you don't want to read that. Hope y'all like it!

-AJ

 **Chapter 2**

* * *

 _One who conquers fear cannot be conquered by anyone. - Matshona Dhliwayo_

* * *

Have you ever had one of those moments that you've imagined in your head a million times? As if it's one of your brain's favorite ideas to play with; some kind of scenario that you can idealize enough that it becomes a sort of comfort. You come up with all sorts of different factors that would play into each specific second, and each reaction is perfectly timed, and the words all go together the way they're supposed to because everything is _perfect_ as long as it's in your head. I used to sometimes imagine what it would be like if I saw the twins again. If they would be together, if they had changed, if Elsa had cut her hair or Kristoff had grown a beard, what they would say to me, what _I_ would say to _them_.

I can honestly say, of all the million times I imagined the reunion, it never once occurred to me that I would find Kristoff sitting on my couch, covered with Pringle crumbs, giving me his stupid, shit-eating grin, as if it hadn't been three years since we've seen each other. As if he came over to visit every afternoon, as if this hadn't been the first time in a very, _very_ long time that I was 100% positive that he wasn't dead.

I trembled from head to foot, my jaw muscles snapping my mouth closed with an audible click, my body and brain trying to find someway to reconnect themselves after the shock. My eyesight was kind of fuzzy, and I couldn't really feel the backs of my knees, quickly overcome with the sensation that there was no way I could possibly stand up anymore. Kristoff, luckily, seemed to realize this, and caught me the very moment my knees started to buckle, having jumped up from the couch faster than I could blink.

"Anna?" He lowered me slowly into the wicker chair in the corner, his voice brimming with concern. "Anna, hey, look at me."

I tried to focus on his face, his voice, but something was wrong with my head, I couldn't bring myself to hear him, my vision too busy swimming with blonde hair and tears.

"Kristoff."My voice wavered in a slightly embarrassing way, but I couldn't bring myself to care. "Am- am I awake right now?"

"100% fiestypants."

I immediately burst into tears and launched myself forward, clinging to Kristoff's large blue hoodie, burying my face in his chest. I wanted to talk to him, to ask him a million questions, to demand to know where Elsa was, but I could barely breathe through the sobbing that wracked my frame, shaking my whole body with every exhale. Kristoff hesitantly wrapped his arms around me, tentative at first, but quickly gaining strength until I was nearly smothered. I didn't care though, if anything it just made me cry that much harder. For the first time in my life, I couldn't get a read on my own feelings; there were too many things swirling through my head, my thoughts scattered and far too distant for me to focus on them. Kristoff's hoodie smelled like he used to in high school; like a barn, bad, but still good in a comforting kind of way. The recognition was not nearly enough to calm me down completely; I still clung to Kristoff's hoodie like a maniac, absolutely refusing to release my grip in fear he might vanish like smoke if I did. However, it did help to ground me slightly from my panic.

"Y-You're here?"

"Unfortunately." He sighed heavily, as if he was doing some horribly dreaded chore. Then he winked at me.

And just like that I was crying again, but grinning like a freaking wackjob. No wonder everyone thought I was crazy.

"I missed you so much." I choked through the sobs, not knowing what else to say, but knowing I wanted Kristoff to hear that.

His arms tightened around me slightly. "I missed you too, Hart." His voice sounded a little strained, like he was struggling against emotion himself, and I sighed with a relief so strong that it was nearly painful. For years I hadn't realized that some small, and incredibly insecure part of myself had been under the impression that wherever Kristoff and Elsa were, they were living their lives, perfectly content without my company, while three years later I still haven't just gotten the fuck over it; that after all this time, I was still unable to move on. To know that he had missed me, to hear it so plainly in his voice, lifted the weight of the sky off my shoulders. I smiled so hard that I felt it all the way in the back of my jaw, it was an uncontrollable thing, my brain giving me no option but to keep it in place.

"Did you really?"

"Duh, pea brain." He rolled his eyes. "Especially Elsa, god she hasn't stopped moping about it since the moment we left the gym-"

"Left the gym?" I cut him off quietly. And just as quickly as I had fallen into a sobbing mess, a switch flicked in the back of my mind, the chaos calming and centering on a incessant, building heat growing in the center of my skull, red flames racing through every synapse, coursing all the way to my fingertips. No more tears fell, crying suddenly felt like the last thing I wanted to do. Kristoff could hear it, the slightly dangerous tone lying quietly beneath a layer of acidic innocence, I could tell in the way his arms stiffened. "As I recall, you _flew_."

Kristoff swallowed hard, and averted his gaze. "Uh, yea, listen-"

"You flew. Out of the roof of the gym. After Elsa punched a hole in the roof. With a massive ice boulder. That she created."

"Anna, you don't understan-"

"What the _FUCK_ happened, Kristoff?!" And I was somehow abruptly enraged, brimming with a fury so painfully heated that red seeped into the edges of my vision, tinting everything the color of blood. I had the insane impulse to shove Kristoff, to push him right out my door and lock it behind him, unable to understand how I could've been happy to see him only moments ago. I flung myself away from him, standing to face with with acid burning the back of my tongue, words that I had never wanted to say before now trembling on my lips, eager to throw themselves on him and inflict the most damage possible. "Where the fuck have you _BEEN?!_ How are you _here_?!"

"Anna, _please_ listen to me-"

"YOU _LEFT_ ME!" I shrieked at him, my voice shaking and cracking in uncontrollable rage; I wanted to break something, I wanted to rip something apart, my hands trembled with the desire of it. "You left me in that place ALONE, Kris! And do you know what happened to me?"

I cut him a sharp smile, my words dripping with venom. "Everyone thought I was crazy. Or a murderer. Or _both_. The town wondered, how could little Anna Hart have gotten out of that situation unscathed? How could she have been the only one left? Why does she only spew this insane story that can't possibly be true? What really happened in the gym that day? What did Anna _do_?"

Kristoff winced, his eyes widening at my level of anger. "I didn't-"

"Or pity." I sneered, the disgust in my voice evident. "It's not her fault. The poor girl is _damaged_ now."Kristoff flinched at the word, the mocking tone I used for the school board, the case lawyers, the police that couldn't agree on anything except that they didn't know why I wasn't dead. "We can't ever expect her to fully recover, her delusion is incredibly imprinted, she genuinely _believes_ it."

"Anna-"

"I was a _pariah_!" My fists trembled dangerously at my sides, violent urges niggling the back end of every thought I had. "People were _scared_ of me! I lost you and Elsa, but that wasn't enough, I had to be _driven_ out of town! Away from the only family I have left! You left me with _no one_! You ruined my _LIFE_!""

"Anna, stop!" Kristoff abruptly changed his approach, grabbing me an the shoulders and tugging me against his chest.

"Get _off_ me!" I screamed at him, shoving roughly against his chest, wishing with all my heart that I was stronger than him. "Get off me! I _HATE_ you!"

My breathing started to accelerate in a concerning way, quickly ripping itself out of my throat, not providing any of the relief it should. I curled in on myself as much as I physically could, grabbing the sides of my skull and counting, always counting, because it's the only thing that works when this happens. Kristoff stroked the back of my head whispering to me about breathing, and I was trying, I was trying to calm down, but I couldn't, every muscle in my body shook and tensed, the air in my lungs couldn't stay there long enough for me to feel like I was breathing.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, still stroking my hair and counting with me. "I'm so, so sorry, Anna."

And I just cried. For longer than I should've, much much longer than should've been necessary. I cried until my eyes ached and the skin of my face was red and splotchy, sensitive from me constantly wiping away tears. Each breath shook on the way in and out, pulling and tugging against my unyielding rib cage, my lungs begging to go back to their erratic staccato, but I would not allow them. Finally, after what felt like hours, I raised my head to meet Kristoff's gaze, his brown eyes softening and crinkling in the corners.

"I don't hate you." I tried to tell him, but my voice was hoarse and cracked, and it sounded like a broken whisper. "I'm sorry."

"No, Anna, no." He shook his head vehemently. "You have more than enough reason to be angry with us, we let you down in the worst way possible." I saw his jaw clench with an anger that I couldn't understand. "But we're going to make it right. We are, I swear to you. We are going to make you safe again."

His words were earnest, pleading with me to believe him, to trust that he would protect me from whatever danger he was talking about, but I needed to understand, I had grown so weary of questions over the years. People always wanted to know something, constantly digging and kneading, trying desperately to understand everything around them. I had millions of questions, a never ending torrent of ignorance that nearly drove me insane because no one _knew_ , no one understood, and no one had the answers. That's the problem with being a little crazy, you're questions become void of any importance, any credibility, the _normal_ people unable to be bothered with the inquisition of things that exist outside their bubble of reality, any threat to what they _know_ to be proven fact an act of the highest offense. So when I asked people to explain it to me, to tell me what had happened, to reassure me that I wasn't crazy, that they knew what was going on and that I would be fine, they did nothing but confirm what I already knew. That no one could explain what happened, because it shouldn't have; none of it should be possible. And now one of the only people in the entire world that could answer me sat directly in front of me, and I could only bring myself to ask him one thing.

"Where's Elsa?"

"Ugh, you two are annoying about each other." Kristoff wrinkled his nose. "I've been here like five minutes and it's already all about her."

"Shut up, you dummy."I shoved against his shoulder and stood up, glancing at my stove clock. "You've been here for three hours. And it's perfectly normal for me to want to know why she didn't come to this grand reunion."

Kristoff's playful grin slowly faded, leaving his face slightly worried. "Um, to explain that to you, I kind of have to explain a lot of things to you, and we don't exactly have the time right now."

"What do you mean we don't have the time?" A spark of fear quickly caught in my chest. "You- You're not leaving are you?"

"No!" He waved his hands in front of him, quickly backtracking at my expression. "I mean _we_ don't have a lot of time. As in, you're coming with me, you should pack some clothes. Also, do you work the next three days?"

"I have work the day after tomorrow, but no mor- wait going where? What are you talking about? I can't just leave."

"You don't really have much of a choice, princess. You're going to have to call in to work until at least Tuesday."

"What the hell for?"

"That's when Elsa gets back."

The was a nearly giddy feeling in my chest at the mention of Elsa coming back from wherever she was, at the thought of maybe getting to _see_ Elsa again, but I tried not to let it distract me from Kristoff and his confusing and slightly irritating instructions. "That's fantastic, but I don't see why that means I have to call in until then. And you still haven't told me why I have to leave-"

"Because people are _watching_ you, Anna." Kristoff finally snapped, glaring up at me from where he was going through my drawers and pulling out random clothing. " _Our_ people. And until it's handled, you have to disappear."

"You're not explaining anything! I don't-"

"Anna, we don't have time for this!" He shouted, and something finally clicked in my brain. Kristoff was scared. I could see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his hands shook slightly, his darting eyes, keeping watch of every entrance to my apartment. Without the distraction of me acting like a raving lunatic, he couldn't hide it as well as he was before. I immediately felt ice coat the inside of my stomach, dread swimming through my veins, because in all the time I've known Kristoff, I never saw him scared. Worried, yes, when the gunman was in the gym, but never like this. Never the kind of scared that made a person twitchy. I laid a hand on his shoulder, and felt his muscles jump in response.

"Kris?" He finally calmed his searching and turned to meet my eyes. "Who is watching me?"

He shifted his gaze away. "You really don't need to worry about it, it's nothing that Elsa can't handle-"

"Then why are you so scared?"

He clenched his jaw. "Because _I_ wouldn't be able to handle them." He turned back toward me. "And they know where you live."

I suddenly felt like there wasn't enough air in the room to breathe properly, my pulse accelerating far too quickly. "Who is they?"

Kristoff sighed loudly, obviously giving up on trying to keep me in the dark. "The Kolai."

The word sent a small shiver up my back, made my palms sweat. It somehow sounded familiar, in the same way a scary story from your childhood still mildly freaks you out when you happen to recall it.

"It's a small, independent group, one that Elsa can easily deal with, you have absolutely nothing to worry about, just a few days-"

"What does that mean?"

Kristoff gave me a confused look. "What?"

"What does that mean? Kolai."

Kristoff sighed. "It's a word from the Old Language, it's what we all call them."

I raised my eyebrows, and rolled my hand in a "Go on" motion.

Kristoff shook his head and looked away. "It means The Kill."

"Oh." I swallowed, and quickly started helping Kristoff pack. "Good to know."

 **/**

The ride to HQ (as Kristoff referred to it) was not nearly as awkward as it should have been. Kristoff and I fell easily back into our old roles from high school, made up mostly of relentless teasing and occasional physical violence (mostly on my part), and my heart sung with the happiness I was feeling, my world finally having fallen back into swing, feeling like no time at all had passed, the grey, transient life I had been living for three years almost completely overshadowed by my utter contentment. I had nearly forgotten what it felt like to not be a little sad all the time.

But then, that had always been the way with me and Kristoff. We just clicked, from the very first day we met, going together with an ease that was almost laughable it was so effortless. Kristoff just _got_ me, in a way that hardly anyone else ever had. It was always Elsa and I that were a little off, not ever quite on the same page, always a little tilted one way or the other because neither of us could ever say what we needed to, and especially not to one another. Not to say that Elsa and I didn't go well together, it was just a more interesting mix, a little more spice than sugar. There was a near constant, underlying tension that I felt whenever in Elsa's presence that was simultaneously exhilarating and nerve wracking. I never know which way she will move, I never know exactly what she's going to say, but at the same time I do, because I _know_ Elsa, in a way that's incredibly difficult to articulate.

"So, when we get there," Kristoff started, snapping me out of my thoughts. "We're going to sit down, and you ask me whatever you need to ask me. We'll get everything settled, you'll finally know everything, I won't hold back, promise."

I grinned and stared out the window of his nice ass car (that I was quite jealous of). "Where is there, exactly?"

"Manhattan."

I rolled my eyes. "Of course."

It was no secret to anyone that the twins were loaded. I don't mean just wealthy, it's the buy-an-island kind of rich. As far as I knew, the twins' parents had died when they were much younger, and had left an insanely large amount of money, as well as a few different houses and properties dotted all across the world. Kristoff and Elsa used to occasionally travel to one of their vacation houses for weeks at a time, coming back with random souvenirs as presents for me. I still have all of them in a box at the back of my closet.

But that train of thought led to a question that I never thought I would ask. "Kris, what happened to your parents?"

Kristoff flinched slightly, and I immediately felt like an absolute piece of shit. "I-I'm sorry, I've just always wondered, and I didn't want to bring it up and upset you or Elsa, but I never knew what happened; you guys just told me they were gone, and I used to worry about it, because I didn't know if it was something bad or not, and-"

"Anna, it's alright, calm down." Kristoff gave a small, sad chuckle. "I was going to have to tell you anyway, for all of this to make any sort of sense." He sighed heavily and kept his eyes trained stubbornly on the road. "When Elsa and I were twelve they were killed by The Kolai."

I stared at him in stunned shock for a second, unable to fully understand. "B-But I-"

"It was a different group." He assured me quickly, worrying that I would start to panic again. "The Kolai is incredibly unorganized, there are tiny clans all over the place, like the one that's watching you, that rarely ever actually do any damage. There are also single individuals that learn about The Kolai's mission, and try to take it on themselves, we call them Muttals. That's what the gunaman was, in the gym. A random guy that had somehow stumbled across us on accident, and fucked everything up in the process." Kristoff gripped the steering while so tightly his knuckles turned white.

"What does Muttal mean?"

Kristoff's demeanor immediately changed, him flashing a quick grin. "Idiot."

I laughed.

"But the only thing you really have to worry about is The Rayalti." Kristoff spat the name, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, his face screwing up with disgust and anger. "They're the big boys, the ones you _should_ be scared of. Especially us."

"Why especially you?"

Kristoff clenched his jaw. "They're the ones that killed our parents." He shot me a quick glance and sighed at my obvious confusion. "The Kolai are spirit hunters. They have been for thousands of years. Literally since the time man could comprehend a thing like a spirit, The Kolai has been working to obliterate them. Their reasoning is that spirits are too dangerous, too volatile to live peacefully among humans, and if I'm being honest, in some cases they're right. But generally, spirits are a peaceful race, they want nothing more than to live unnoticed, as a human would. The Rayalti are the kings, the unofficial leaders of The Kolai, and they're the ones you have to watch out for. If they see you, you're already dead."

"I don't understand, why do they want you and Elsa then, you guys aren't-" And then the thousand piece puzzle in my mind shifted so that I could finally, _finally_ see the full picture, and my _god_ I am stupid. I stared at Kristoff with wide eyes, but he adamantly refused to look at me, keeping his eyes intensely trained on the road. I could see his tension, completely uncertain how I would take the news, how I was going to react to him.

"You and Elsa aren't human. Are you?"

The humming silence that thickened throughout the car like smoke was all the answer I needed.

It was startling how easy the news was to accept, as if I had somehow always known in the back of my mind. It was just Elsa and Kristoff, the way they were around other people, the kind of feeling they gave off, the distinct impression that either one of them could kill you, and happily would, if you were to piss them off enough. They've always just been something _more_. And I always knew that, I always knew that there was something inherently different about the both of them, and honestly the main emotion I was feeling was relief; to finally _understand_ , for things to actually make some sort of sense for the first time in three years. Of course there was a good portion of me that was completely overwhelmed with shock, but it was calmed slightly at the realization that they had never hurt me, neither of them, had ever intentionally done anything to hurt anyone unprovoked, at least that I had seen. And it made perfect sense to me that if they hadn't hurt me yet, they weren't going to. I was also generally prone to believing in things like werewolves and ghosts; I had been that way since I was a child, never once considering that those magical beasts that everyone always told stories about could _all_ be fake. I was convinced that at least _some_ of them had to be true, otherwise, why would the legends have lasted this long? Given this new information, it now seemed blatantly obvious that Elsa and Kristoff were something else, and enigma I had yet to encounter, because _of course_ they were. I had never met another human being like either of them, and that's why; because they're not human beings.

"No." Kristoff's voice cracked and he quickly cleared his throat. "No, we're not."

"So..." I furrowed my brow in thought. "Spirits?"

Kristoff sighed in heavy relief that I didn't immediately fling myself from his moving car. "Uh, yea. Well, spirits are an ancient race, a lot older than humans. There are four different categorizations, for the four elements, and you don't know which you fit into until you're seven, usually. I was kind of a, um, late bloomer." If I looked closely I swore Kristoff was blushing. "But, yea, anyway, spirits breed with other spirits, have little spirit kids, like me and Elsa were."

I grinned.

"We had never been close with a human until you, Anna." And he actually turned to look at me directly. "Neither of us had ever had any interest. But Elsa, she, well she saw you and the rest was history."

There was a very slight nervousness to Kristoff's tone, a catch in his voice when he mentioned Elsa seeing me. It was brief and barely noticeable, but it gave me the distinct impression that he was hiding something. I wanted to ask, but I was also appreciating his candor so much at the moment, and didn't want to cause him to close off, so I left it alone temporarily.

"So, what are the four categories?"

"Well, spirits are elemental, each of us belonging to one of them, either Earth, Water, Fire, or Air." Kristoff puffed his chest out slightly. "I'm a Vimana." At the word something shifted in the atmosphere of the car, like a gentle summer breeze blowing through the vents, happy and light; it made me feel giddy and giggly, almost like laughing gas. "An air spirit."

I snorted and Kristoff quickly glared at me.

"What?" He snapped.

"Oh, come on." I laughed. "That's funny. You? An air spirit?" I scoffed. "You should totally be earth."

"What!?" Kristoff yelped as if I had pinched him. "Why?"

"Look at you!" I gestured to his shoulders that were easily three times broader than mine. "You're a freaking ox. I would expect an air spirit to be a little dancer or something. Someone willowy and graceful, you know? Like Elsa."

It was Kristoff's turn to snort then. "Elsa is _not_ an air spirit." He rolled his eyes like that should be the most obvious thing in the world. "You're element has nothing to do with your physical appearance."

"Well, then where does it come from?"

"Your Kor." He stated, his humor immediately drying up. "It's like our souls. It's the part of ourselves that makes us spirits, what's most important to us, above all else. It's what defines your element."

"What's yours?"

"Freedom." He answered immediately, with not a single trace of question or doubt, as if it were an absolute truth. "Freedom and adventure, discovery, that kind of thing."

"Okay." I nodded slowly. "Well, what's Elsa's."

Kristoff hesitated. "Um, I know we are having kind of a candid discussion here, but that's like, a _majorly_ personal issue. You'd need to ask Elsa yourself."

I pouted a little, the curiosity awoken in me nearly insatiable. "Will you at least tell me her element?"

He paused for a second. "Elsa is a Nir. A water spirit."

"Water." I repeated. "Elsa the water spirit." I grinned; it sounded exactly right, the perfect amount of extraordinary for Elsa.

"Hey, we're almost here." Kristoff woke me from my musing and gestured to an insanely expensive looking apartment complex. Surgically white, with jutting balconies and massive glass walls along the front that reflected the sun harshly against my gaze. "We're in the penthouse." Kristoff pointed to the top.

"Of course you are." I grinned and shifted to grab my bag from the back seat, when something occurred to me. "Hey, Kris?"

"Yea?"

"Earlier, when you were talking about the Rayalti and your parents, you said that you especially had to watch out for them. Why?"

Kristoff sighed. "I was kind of hoping you'd forget about that." He reached out the car window and punched a code into the keypad to unlock the massive gate guarding the building. It swung open without a single creak and we drove through. Kristoff waited until we were parked and the car was off before he spoke again, and when he did, his voice was heavy, laden with troubles that I had yet to discover.

"It's because of Elsa."

The way he spoke sent a shiver down my spine. It was with a kind of helplessness that I hadn't ever heard from him before, and it made me uneasy. "What about her?"

There was a long pause, long enough to make me think that maybe he wasn't going to answer me.

"She's not supposed to exist."

He hopped out of the car without another word, hoisting my bag over his shoulder and slamming the door behind him. I quickly fumbled with my seat belt, trying to unhook it and catch up with him. I stumbled out of the car and jogged to reach him, my breathing now slightly labored due to my struggle. "What are you talking about?"

"Wait until we're inside." He whispered and nodded his head toward an elderly couple that were sitting on a nearby bench.

Walking into the lobby took my breathe away. Like, literally, I genuinely gasped.

"Now, this is _swanky_." I whistled lowly and stared around at the lavishly decorated room. There was a massive fireplace that was surrounded by plush, expensive looking sofas and armchairs. One of those big ass Persian rugs covered the most of the floor, leaving white marble tiles peeking out from under the corners. Renaissance-esque paintings were dotted up and down every corridor I could see, each one in a massive, ornate frame. I looked down at my scuffed converse and ripped skinny jeans, which contrasted starkly against the pristine floor. I was wearing my favorite green sweater, that was at least two sizes too big for me, and my hair was in it's custom braids, my head capped by my black beanie that I literally never took off unless I was going to sleep. Everything about my appearance screamed that I did not belong in this building with these people, in this part of New York.

But then Kristoff grinned at me and hooked an arm around my shoulders. "They have one of those legit laundry shoot things. Where you just toss your clothes down the hole."

"No way!" My eyes glowed with all the potential I could see, quickly forgetting how uncomfortable I was. "We have to test it out before I leave."

Kristoff laughed. "Deal."

When the elevator dinged to the top floor, I expected to step out into the hallway, but was instead greeted by an incredibly messy living room, littered with pizza boxes and soda cans. There were dirty clothes tossed over the back of the pristine white couch and the feather soft carpet had what looked like peanut butter smeared into it at several spots. There was a red rubber ball wedged into one of the crooks in the chandelier, and a song that sounded very similar to Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl playing softly from a high quality stereo in the corner.

"Wow."

"Shit." Kristoff quickly darted in front of me and sheepishly started stacking the pizza boxes and throwing various clothes into a pile in the center of the room. "The whole top floor is ours so the elevator just comes out in the living room, and I, uh- You know, when Elsa's gone, it's harder to keep the place clean and everything so..."

I laughed loudly. "You're such a boy, Kris."

After cleaning up a bit we ordered Chinese take out and sat on the floor of the living room, laughing about anything and everything, finally taking a small break to catch up on everything that had been going on for the last three years.

"And then Olaf-" I burst into giggles again, unable to even finish my story I was laughing so hard. "Olaf sprinted the entire two blocks back to our complex, busts through my door like there's a murderer after him and screams at me 'Oh my God, Anna!'" I quickly adopt a youthful boy impression that is nothing at all what Olaf sounds like, but it's what I hear when he talks to me; Kristoff fell on his side, laughing and wiping at his eyes. "'I just saw the most glorious fucking cat that has ever lived at that florists place down the street and we have to steal it.'"

"You stole a florist's cat?"He wheezed.

"She wasn't feeding it, the old thing just liked to hang around her shop for some reason. But Olaf made me put on all black clothes and sneak down the back alley to catch the stupid thing, and when I got there all it did was hiss and claw the shit out of my arm. I put it in the bag I brought with me and ran back home. I was so distracted that I forgot to text Olaf and tell him that he could stop keeping the florist busy, and he ended up staying there and talking to her for two and a half hours."

Kristoff and I busted into another long series of cackles, nearly drowning out the stereo that was still steady blasting Katy Perry.

"He named it Marshmallow. It's fat as hell now, and still completely horrible to everyone but him."

Kristoff's laughing slowly died out and he looked at me with a contemplative expression, seeming almost worried.

"What?"

"You're not-" He cleared his throat. "You're not like, _dating_ that guy, right?"

" _What_?" I snorted and started laughing hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. "Oh my god, Kris."

"It's a legitimate question." He huffed.

"No, it's really not." I laughed and rolled my eyes. "For one, I'm like Queen of the Gays. I could lift a dead army with all of this gay might coursing through my veins. You have yet to meet a person gayer than I am."

"I got it." Kristoff laughed.

"Also, I don't really date. It's one of the side benefits of being a lunatic."

His smile quickly dropped. "Anna-"

"Don't sweat it, Kris." I waved away what I knew would be his thousandth apology. "Really, it's alright. I'm not mad about it; it's how things had to be. And now I have you guys back." I beamed at him. "Anyway, why do you care if I'm dating Olaf or not? You don't even know him."

"No, that's not what I-" Kristoff seemed to be thinking very hard about the words he wanted to say; stopping long enough that I started to wonder if he was going to finish at all, or just leave the explanation hanging. When he finally did speak, each word was with careful consideration. "I feel like, if you were to be in a relationship with some random person, that it may be like, a problem."

"What are you-"

"Don't ask me." He cut me off smoothly. "I'm telling you everything I can, but this is not one of those things."

There was a warning in his voice, telling me not to push him on this, that there was no way I could get him to give. It must be important, judging from the way he'd planned out his words before speaking. I was curious, but not enough to keep asking and risk pissing him off. "Fine." I huffed.

He steadily moved us along to another subject, and I quickly forgot my irritation. He told me the revised version of his and Elsa's childhood, the parts that he had previously kept secret now filling in blank spaces. He told me how they were born in Russia ("I knew that's what you two were speaking in the gym!"/ "We speak Russian when there are Americans nearby suspected to be part of The Kolai, it's to hide ourselves better. Me and Elsa made it a rule a few years ago.") and then moved to the US directly after the death of their parents to be looked after by a trusted family friend who knew the situation. ("Kai? You're butler? _He's_ a spirit?"/ "One of my father's oldest friends. He's our godfather, and definitely _not_ our butler; trust me, when other people weren't around it wasn't us that did the ordering. We just made it appear that way to avoid any connection being found between us and Kai, and somehow linked back to my parents through him.") He told me how they had been traveling for the last two years, and recently moved to New York. When I asked him why, he got a little fidgety, which I thought was strange because it seemed like a relatively simple question, but he blew it off with a simple "Elsa just wanted to."

It was then that my brain finally decided to snap me awake from the extended distraction I had been under. "Elsa!"

Kristoff jumped at my sudden outburst. "Holy shit, fiestypants, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"What were you talking about earlier? In the car, when you said Elsa shouldn't exist?"

He swallowed thickly, his big brown eyes shifting away. "Kind of a tough subject, Anna."

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"No, it's fine." He rubbed a weary hand down his face. "You need to know this, it'll help push everything into place."

He stared out the massive window to our left, his gaze skimming over the tops of building after building. "When we were born they thought we were normal. It was unusual for a spirit to have twins, but not unheard of, and no one thought anything about it for a long time. Our sixth birthday, that's when things started to go wrong." He turned his gaze to me. "Elsa and I were playing at the lake behind out house early in the morning, having a snowball fight. We ended up getting into an actual argument with one another after I pegged her in the face with one. She got upset, said I was cheating, I said I could throw them wherever I liked as long as they hit her. It ended up getting way out of hand and I flung a snowball as hard at I could, right at her face." He paused for a moment, his eyes lost in the memory. "It never hit her. It stopped, about a foot away, and floated there, in mid air. And Elsa was just staring at it, for a good solid minute it hung in the air and she just gawked at it. Then she tried to look at me, to say something I think, and out of no where the snowball zoomed backwards and hit my right in the eye. She'd run over to me, to try and help me up; she was crying, saying she didn't mean it, that it was an accident, that she was sorry and I couldn't tell Mama and Papa."

Kristoff's brow furrowed in deeper concentration. "If I think back, there were a couple times before that, where she had made small, insignificant things happen, seemingly out of her control, but she'd never done anything like that; it had never been that intense before. Spirit children are not supposed to show any hint of their powers before they're seven, and even then, they shouldn't have been able to manipulate things the way Elsa could. She was way, way beyond where she should've been, and as soon as my parents found out, they tried to hide her."

"Why?"

Kristoff flinched a little and his eyes refocused; it was clear he had been lost in his memories, almost forgetting I was even there. "Elsa was a Turoki. It means traitor."

"I don't understand."

"One of the reasons that spirits don't have twins very often is because, very, _very_ rarely, sometimes one of the twins will kind of, take some of the other's Kor." Kristoff sighed. "Elsa was more powerful than me before we were out of the womb, but it didn't have anything to do with us personally. It was because, by then, I was a little less than a full spirit, and she was a little more."

He stared at me with doleful eyes, his expression incredibly resigned and tired looking. "My powers didn't show up until I was almost ten years old, and even today, they're weaker than most normal air spirits. I can only do hyperspeed, and current manipulation."

"What are those?"

"Hyperspeed is me being able to bend the air around me so that I can move way, way faster than a human. Elsa says it makes me look blurry, like a shadow of my body is bouncing around wherever I'm standing."

A vivid memory of seeing Kristoff run up from behind me while I laid on the gym floor, his outline unfocused, looking like another figure was standing next to him. That was one curiosity taken care of.

"Current manipulation is me moving the air with my thoughts." He extended his hand towards me, palm out, and then flicked his fingers lightly. It immediately felt like a leafblower was hitting me directly in the face from a few inches away.

"Okay, okay I get it!" I shoved my hands in front of my face, my braids flinging wildly behind me. "You can turn it off now!"

Kristoff chuckled a little and flicked his fingers again, the air calming and returning to it's stagnant presence. I stared at him in amazement.

"That is, singlehandedly, the coolest thing I've ever seen." I grinned at him, and a smile split across his face.

"You haven't seen anything yet. The things Elsa can do make mine look like a children's party magician. Even the stuff you saw in the gym, that wasn't even her warm up act."

"Speaking of Elsa, back to the main subject." I pulled my braids back into their original positions, trying to smooth them out a little. "Why did they hide her?"

Kristoff snorted. "Anna, think about The Kolai, they hate regular spirits. Turoki are a literal demon to them. If anyone had so much as whispered about one being born they would've ripped the entire continent apart looking for her. It's why the other spirits call them traitors, they draw an insane amount of attention from a group that wants to kill all of us. If anything, the other spirits hate Turoki even more than The Kolai." Kristoff sighed, his eyes glazing over a bit. "Elsa learned to control what she could do over the years. It was still strange to us why she had such an affinity for ice, she's way better with it that she is with regular water. Snow too, pretty much anything cold, Elsa can control it, she can even create it herself, which is nearly unheard of. By the time we were twelve we had both mastered our powers, Elsa going so far as to practice daily at the lake, still terrified she was going to slip up. It was a few months after our birthday when they came." Kristoff's jaw clenched and his words thickened and hardened around the edges, like they were much harder to say than normal. "Our parent's heard them. I remember the way my mom looked at me, like it was the last time she'd ever get the chance." He paused for a moment, drawing a deep breath. "We had a safe room, buried under the basement floor, hidden entrance and all. Our parents always told us it was just a precaution, but thinking back on it, I don't think they expected anything other than what happened. They locked us down there, told us to watch the clock, and when it struck twelve the autolock would disengage, and that no matter what we saw when we came out we _had_ to leave. We had to get our things and go, as far and fast as we could, and that Uncle Kai would find us soon."

Kristoff stopped and stared out the window, a deep, deep sadness hunching his shoulders and drooping his head lower and lower; I heard him trying to steady his breathing, trying to stop it from hitching on the way out. His eyes were filled with a kind of numbness I had never seen before, a sort of frozen terror that is so painful, and so horrific, that you can't even register it, and instead your brain decides to feel nothing.

"We waited, like we were told." His voice sounded hollow and weak, no inflection in a single syllable. "When the door unlocked and we walked outside... When we saw what had happened, Elsa lost it." He touched his chest in a painful kind of way, like remembering an old wound. "She screamed, and ice shot out everywhere, it covered everything, even parts of her. The snow that had been falling froze in the air, still as death. I remember the cold; it was unnatural. An aggressive kind, I could feel it on my skin, in my chest every time I tried to breathe, it was like it was _alive_." Kristoff shivered, even the memory of the cold raising goosebumps along his arms. "I was crying, I couldn't get her to come with me. I was screaming at her that we had to go, we had to leave right now, like they told us to, and she just laid on the ground and didn't move. Sometimes I thought she had stopped breathing. I went and packed all of our things myself, loaded up two duffel bags and literally drug Elsa out of the house."

Kristoff sighed and rubbed the back of his neck; his eyes looked tired. "We were in the woods for almost a week. I don't think Elsa spoke to me the whole time. Some part of her had changed; she was like a puppet, only moving when someone yanked her strings along." He finally cracked a weak smile. "When Kai found us things got better. We had a home again; he brought us to America, about as far away as we could get. We were home schooled for a few years, but after a while Kai couldn't deal with us being in the house constantly, and that's when we started at Warren."

"Kris, I-" I tried and failed to clear my throat. "I'm sorry for making you go through all of this, we don't have to talk about it anymore. If I had known I wouldn't have asked about-"

"It's alright, Anna." He gave me a small smile. "I'm glad that you know about my parents. I'm sick of having to lie about them. And you deserve to know all this. It's our fault you're in this mess in the first place."

"That is one thing I don't understand." I bit my lip in confusion. "Why is The Kolai after _me_? I'm not a spirit."

Kristoff sighed. "The only thing with can think of is that they've somehow linked you to us. You've never been around any other spirits, Elsa would be able to tell." I wanted to ask him how Elsa could possibly know that, but he barreled along, giving me no opportunity to question him. "If they were to have gotten to you before Elsa and I did they probably would have interrogated you, asked you questions that wouldn't have made any sense to you, but would've helped them find us. And then they would have killed you. Made it look like an accident somehow, maybe pushed you off the fire escape or something, but they wouldn't have let you live."

A cold feeling raced down my spine. "I knew people were watching me, they had been for weeks, every time I left home. Right before you were at my apartment one of them was following me down the street."

"What?!" Kristoff yelped, his voice jumping a few octaves. "One of them was _following_ you home? And you didn't think that would be important to tell me?"

"I didn't know it was related."

Kristoff stared at me like a had grown a second head. "You're deranged."

"So, I've been told."

He rolled his eyes. "Look, this day has been _way_ too long. Why don't we go to sleep and talk about all this more in the morning?"

Part of me wanted to argue, unwilling to leave Kristoff's side, still afraid that when I closed my eyes he would disappear, and this would all prove to be some horribly vivid dream. That would kill me. Another part of me was more exhausted than I had ever been in my life, the level of stress I had dealt with today draining me in an incredibly unpleasant way. I fought against my drooping eyelids.

Kristoff seemed to sense this, and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. "I will still be here when you wake up, it will all still have happened, you'll still be here. I promise."

I didn't say anything for a moment, my stubbornness holding out for a little longer, and then reluctantly nodded.

He smiled. "You can have Elsa's room, since she's gone for now."

Even though nothing about his suggestion was remotely embarrassing, I blushed all the way to the tips of my ears at the thought of sleeping in _Elsa's_ bed. Kristoff saw, and sent a sly grin my way. "What's the matter, Anna?"

"Nothing." My voice was incredibly unsteady. "That will be fine."

Kristoff laughed and helped me get settled, showing me the room and adjoining bathroom, and where I could put my things.

The minute I stepped into Elsa's room I stopped listening to him, and I think he could tell, because he kept his parting words brief. "I hardly ever wake up before noon, so... don't wake me up before noon, or I'll beat your ass." He grinned widely at me. "Welcome to Wolf Witness Protection, hope you enjoy your stay." And with a soft click of the door I was alone.

Alone in Elsa's room.

The walls were pale blue, white lace curtains hanging over every window and draped across the top of her massive canopy bed, combined with plush white carpet, made the room seem like a forest right after snowfall, when everything is quiet and kind of sleepy, before messy footprints stomp their way through the accumulation on the ground and ruin the picture. Her walls had small, hand drawn still life pictures of anything and everything, pinned all over in a happy sort of disarray. I stared at the drawings for longer than I'd like to admit, just breathing it in, absorbing the Elsa-ness of this room, and reveling in the warmth it brought to my chest. Even being near Elsa's _stuff_ was enough to turn me into a complete sap within minutes. I sat on the edge of her bed and tried to talk some sense into myself, but it was at that moment that a photo on her beside table caught my eye.

It was an old picture, but I remember exactly when it was taken.

 _"Els!" I skipped over to where she sat on the park bench, facing the lake with a far off look in her eye, watching the ducks swim lazily past, their babies trailing along behind them in a neat line. Her head snapped up to look at me, and a grin quickly hitched itself across her face._

 _"Anna." She inclined her head in that regal, composed way she always acknowledged people, except when she looked back up I saw her smirking at me, the way that she didn't smirk at anyone else. It made my stomach roll with nerves. "What brings a pretty girl like you to a place like this, all by herself?"_

 _I blushed and rolled my eyes at the same time. I watched her grin widen at how easy it was for her to fluster me. She was in one of her moods; one of those rare times when she blatantly accepted any kind of flirtation I threw her way; I knew I had to take advantage of it. "I could ask you the same thing." I giggled and sat beside her, way closer than necessary, but Elsa didn't seem to mind. In, fact, she immediately threw her arm around my shoulders, in an incredibly brazen act of affection, at least for her._

 _She shrugged her indifference. "I like it here. I like to look at pretty things." She turned her grin on me, and I couldn't help but look away, unable to hold her gaze and be perfectly sure that I wouldn't do something incredibly stupid._

 _"Hey, will you do something for me?" Her voice was much more serious, and when I turned back to face her, her expression had hardened slightly._

 _"Of course." I would've probably chopped off my own arm if she's asked me to._

 _"Take a picture with me?"_

 _I laughed, and Elsa huffed, trying to pull her arm away from my shoulders, getting it stuck in the hood of my favorite Deathly Hallows sweatshirt, which only made me laugh harder. She crossed her arms across her chest in irritation. "I was being serious."_

 _"I'm sorry." I tugged on the sleeve of her t shirt, (a bad habit of mine) wondering how she wasn't freezing in the biting autumn air. I leaned over to rest my head against her shoulder, and sighed in contentment. "I just thought it was going to be, like, a big deal or something."_

 _"It is." She whined slightly, and if I ever told her how cute I thought it was she'd skin me alive. "I want to remember how we are today. Because we're going to change, me, you, and Kris, we're all going to grow up and move on and everything will be different, and I want to at least make sure that I can remember how it is now." She turned her eyes to mine, hers seeming somehow bigger than normal. There was a small pause, where we just stared at each other for a second, me trying desperately to decipher what she could possibly be thinking about, but to no avail. Finally I just nodded, and Elsa grinned widely, pulling her phone from her jean pocket. She turned on the front facing camera and whispered, "Say cheese." in my ear right before she kissed me on the cheek and snapped the photo._

That was the frozen image it produced. A younger, less tired looking version of myself, grinning widely, face redder than a fire truck, and Elsa, lips firmly planted on my cheek, but still somehow looking like she was smiling, her arm hooked affectionately around my neck. The memory of that day is permanently seared into my brain, the feeling of Elsa's lips on my cheek in a ridiculously innocent way, still somehow brought on an impressive blush any time I thought about it. I had been shocked; Elsa had never, ever been that bold before, and she didn't mention it afterwards, acting like nothing had ever happened, but I couldn't forget or ignore it. I just stared at the picture for a long time, a strange feeling that nearly overwhelmed me, hitting me square in the chest when I thought about Elsa looking at it, thinking about that day, using it, like she said she would, to remember how we were then. The thought of her missing me made tears prick at the corners of my eyes, but I had had enough crying for today. Instead I smiled and rolled myself onto her bed, burrowing into the softest sheets I had ever felt in my life, and whispering "I missed you too." into the millions of pillows covering her bed, creating a kind of nest around me

I barely had time to think about how they smelled like her before I was out like a light.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hey everyone! It's three in the morning here and I just got this done. I don't really love this chapter; it's a ton of exposition, which I'm not good at writing, so it was a bit of a pain, but I hope that all of the explanations make sense, there was a lot of information to try and get out, and I worry that it's not very good quality. If y'all have any tips you could provide on getting better at it, that would be great. :) I was hopeful that we would get to see Elsa in this chapter, but after planning it out, I feel like this would have droned on for far too long, and ended up super boring, as we still have some tweaking and adjusting before Elsa can make an appearance. Also, I apologize again for any spelling or grammatical errors y'all find, I will try to come back and fix them after I have a bit more of the story done. Anyway, I hope this doesn't put you all to sleep!

As always, I live for reviews and advice, everything is very much appreciated, y'all have to tell me the things I can do better at! Let me know what you guys think!

Thank for reading! :)

-AJ


	4. Chapter 3

**Warning:** Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that this chapter contains some kind of graphic descriptions of violent injuries, blood, that sort of stuff, so, just warning you. Enjoy!

 **-** AJ

 **Chapter 3**

* * *

 _The word 'happiness' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. - Carl Jung_

* * *

When I woke up the first time, I had absolutely no idea where I was for a solid minute, before my heavily sleep deprived brain decided that it didn't matter as long as the bed was comfortable, and I promptly fell back asleep. When I woke up the second time, the first thing that I noticed was that it was not the morning. According to the digital clock on Elsa's nightstand, it was almost one in the afternoon. I must have been way more tired than I thought. The second thing I noticed was that something smelled so good that I had been dreaming about food for the past half hour.

In an effort to start the morning with a good attitude, I tried to fling myself out of bed. It immediately became apparent that I didn't have the necessary grace for _that_ good of an attitude when the sheets caught around my ankles and I slammed to the ground instead.

"Fantastic start to the day." I groaned. "Nice job, Hart. Way to hold true to yourself." I stared at the ceiling fan for a second, trying to decide whether or not I was hungry enough to get off the floor, but eventually my stomach whined it's protest and I hauled myself up, kicking the sheets away from my feet as I went.

"Welcome to The House of Wolf!" Kristoff shouted at me the second I stepped around the corner into the kitchen. I was so startled I almost fell over again. "Our specials today include pancakes and, um..." He hesitated, glancing around the rest of the kitchen before shrugging and focusing back on the stove. "Pancakes."

"Incredible." I muttered, wincing when I tried to pull a hand through my enormous bedhead and it got so tangled it was a struggle to pull it back out. "Got any chocolate chips?"

He snorted. "Elsa lives here."

I grinned. "Where at?"

"Far right top cabinet, second shelf."

"Thanks." I looked in the cabinet, and quickly discovered it had all kinds of good, sugary, cavity inducing food, which just happened to be my favorite kind. I snuck a quick glance behind me at Kristoff, hoping to seem nonchalant, but he noticed before I could even make the grab. "You seem to be under the impression that I've forgotten your bad habits from high school. If you use the last of the powdered sugar, I swear to god, Anna, I will take this spatula and-"

"Okay, okay, jeez!" I pouted. "You could be a little more accommodating to your guest." I adopted a snobby, aristocratic accent and tried my best to stare down at him, which was 100% impossible as he was well over a foot taller than me. I wondered briefly if they had a chair I could stand on to accomplish the task. It was at that moment that I noticed what he was wearing, and I abruptly burst into laughter, scaring Kristoff enough that he dropped the spatula.

"What the hell?!"

"What are you _wearing_?" I wheezed. Kristoff, however, sent a stony glare my way.

"Proper cooking attire."

I laughed harder. "Oh my god."

Kristoff was shirtless, but I had expected that, he was vehemently against wearing shirts when he slept. What he did have on was a pair of plaid pajama pants, and the frilliest, pinkest apron I've ever seen in my life. There was a reindeer stitched on the front of it with the happy slogan "Reindeers Are Better Than People!" in a swooping slanted font that was way too hard to read.

"Stop laughing at my apron, or you get no pancakes."

I slapped a hand over my mouth, nodding my understanding.

After a few minutes silence I suddenly felt the need to speak, which in my case is never a good idea. "So what's on the agenda for today, bromigo?"

There was a moment of tense silence, and Kristoff froze, slowly raising his head to stare at me. "Did you just say-"

"I know I said bromigo, and I apologize, I deeply regret it now, but there is nothing we can do about it except move on."

Kristoff snorted and shook his head, thoroughly exasperated with me. "Honestly there isn't much to do. Whenever Elsa is gone for one reason or another I just trash the place with junk food and then spend the day before she gets here frantically cleaning."

I laughed. Kristoff then set a plate in front of me, holding one of the largest pancakes I'd ever seen in my life.

"Holy god."

"I know, right?" He grinned. "Don't forget the chocolate chips."

I quickly dumped a way larger portion than I needed, and started inhaling the food at an alarming rate. Kristoff stared in wonder. "I forgot how much you eat."

"Pretty scary, right?" I asked around a large mouthful of pancake. Kristoff laughed and then glanced at me with a contemplative expression.

"What?"

"How's your Aunt and Uncle? And Rapunzel?"

I grinned and shrugged a little. "Good. I talked to Rapunzel a few days ago, she's been begging me to come down to Ohio to visit her and Flynn. She hates me living in New York, says its too dangerous and all. Last I heard Aunt Arianna got her car fixed-"

"Don't tell me you wrecked it again!"

I glared at him. "No, I didn't, this was from a much more recent wreck that I had nothing to do with. And it's rude to interrupt."

He rolled his eyes, and I continued. "Uncle Fredrick calls and checks in at least a couple times a month. He's still running the brewery in town. He misses me and Punz, though. I can tell. I would go out to visit them, but, you know, money and my lack of it causes a problem."

Kristoff nodded and then cleared his throat, looking toward the ground. He rubbed at the back of his neck, a nervous tick of his. "How, about, you know, your mom?"

I froze, my hand gripping the bar tightening until the knuckles were white. "I wouldn't know." My voice was soft and chilled, the cool detachment apparent in every word. "I haven't spoken to her since I left."

"Oh." Kristoff nodded, and kept his gaze averted. "So, the institute hasn't called or-"

"They would only call if there was a break in the case." I cut him off quickly, wanting nothing more than to distance myself from the subject. "Or in her evaluation. Neither have happened, and are likely to never happen."

Kristoff could hear the quickly rising anger in my tone, the warning for him to drop it. Kristoff was one of five people in the whole world that vaguely knew what had happened with my parents so long ago, excluding the case workers, and one of only two people that knew by _my_ choice. Telling the twins, at least the basics of what had happened, had been something I felt I had to do, it was a driven need for them to know, to understand what had happened so that they could appreciate the situation for what it was, and not the rumors that flew all across town. When I had moved to Warren it had been with police sirens and violent accusations trailing closely behind me. My aunt and uncle took good care of me, tried to distance me from what had happened, but people talked, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

Kristoff nodded and went back to his own plate, the only sound filling the room from the silverware against our plates. I sighed after a moment, unhappy with the tension now surrounding everything. Knowing Kristoff, he wouldn't speak unless spoken to, especially after a highly charged moment, so I took the initiative.

"Hey, Kris?" I asked after swallowing the massive bite.

"Yea?"

"Will you tell me a little more about the Spirit thing? I just, I feel like I don't know anything, and if it's you and Elsa then I want to learn."

"Well," Kristoff rubbed at the back of his neck. "What do you want to know?"

"Where did spirits come from? Was it an evolution thing, like humans, or some kind of mystical magic thing? Are there other types of spirits, or just the elemental kind like you guys?"

"Honestly, I have no idea on the first two. It's a little hard to get factual scientific evidence on our race since humans don't know we exist, and there isn't really a large enough number for us to have our own, like, community where _we_ could study ourselves. There are the Torram Legends, stuff about how we are the children of the Earth, and our purpose is to benefit her in anyway we can. It's a lot more detailed than that, there is a ton to learn about it, but.." He hesitated, seeming to struggle with his words for a moment. "It's kind of like a religion, in a way. Like the religion of the spirits, except a lot of us don't believe in it. My parents always thought it was a load of nonsense. Elsa was pretty into it at one point, I think; but after we left Wyoming she didn't really want anything to do with it anymore."

I nodded and stared at him with wide eyes, an invitation to continue.

"As for other kinds of spirits, I'm not sure. I would say they don't exist, I've never heard of one, but then again, you would've said Elsa and I didn't exist a day ago. There could be some hidden group I suppose, but if there is it's _very_ well hidden."

"Got it." I bit my lip and glanced down at my socks. "So, um, next question. Do spirits like, exclusively- I mean, like, do they only- are they only attracted to other spirits, or is it like, humans and stuff too?"

 _You are smoother than the bowling alley lanes, Hart._

"Um." Kristoff looked away, the tops of his ears tinted pink. "Anna, that's kind of- Spirits aren't like people in that way."

I felt a small pang in my chest, like someone was poking me with a needle, puncturing whatever bubble of hope had been resting there. "What do you mean?"

"We, um," Kristoff was full on _blushing_ now, and if I hadn't been so upset with his answer I might have laughed. "Spirits mate. Like for life. It's a 'magic' thing, like you said earlier. You would think it was strange."

"No, no no." I tugged on one of the folds of Kristoff's apron. " _Please_ tell me, Kris. I really want to know, I won't judge, I promise."

He sighed heavily and fiddled with what was left of the food on his plate. "It's an instinctual thing. In that way, spirits are a little more.. animalistic, I guess? It's not something we can control. When a spirit finds their En Oru, they-"

"What is that?"

"En Oru, it means My One." Kristoff's eyes were filled with an emotion that I couldn't quite pinpoint; he seemed almost... wistful. "Anyone can have one, humans too, even though they hardly ever know or acknowledge it. My parents were each other's. They just... fit together. The legends say that an En Oru is the partner to your Kor, that finding them is like finding part of yourself. But like I said, it's instinctual. That pull you feel, your whole life, telling you in the back of your mind that you should go here instead of there, or do this instead of that, it's all a lead up to meeting them, seeing them for the first time. From what... I've been told, you feel it, when you find them, like a switch going off. It's the basest of all instincts, you just immediately know that..." He searched for the right phrasing and eventually just shrugged. "They're your's."

"Wow, that..." I was at a loss for words. I gazed at Kristoff in amazement. "That's incredible, Kris! What about you? Do you have that pull you were talking about; where does it tell you to go?"

Kristoff swallowed hard gave me a very, very sad smile. "I don't have one."

I blinked. "Wait, I thought-"

"Do you remember what I told you yesterday? About me and Elsa's birth?" I nodded. He cleared his throat in an effort to look casual, but it was painfully weak. "The fact that some of my Kor went to Elsa means that... I don't have a full one to give someone. I'm not enough of a spirit to have an En Oru. Or at least, not in the way that my people have one. I can't _find_ them, like other spirits. "

I stared at him. He didn't meet my eyes.

"But that..." I struggled to express my anger. "That's bullshit! That isn't fair. Isn't there something you can-"

"Look, Anna, it's okay." Kristoff offered me a small smile. "No one _has_ to have an En Oru to have a good life. You can be completely content without one; some spirits even prefer it that way. Some don't have one at all, going through their whole lives and never finding them because they died or weren't born in the first place or any number of things. It's just the way that things are, nothing fair or unfair about it, it just is."

I wanted to argue, to demand that Kristoff gain his fight back and find a way to fix whatever had happened (it still didn't make complete sense to me), but the level of resignation in him was blatant, and there was a certain fragility behind his excuse that worried me enough to drop it. The subject obviously upset him, but I _had_ to ask.

"Um," I hesitated. There was a large part of me that didn't want Kristoff to realize what I was actually talking about, but another part of me didn't really care as long as I got the answer I wanted. "So, that means that spirits can't, like be with humans? Like, if they're looking for their En Oru.. I mean, that can't be like - a human, can it?"

Kristoff didn't look up for a very long time, and I silently started to wonder if maybe he didn't hear me somehow. He took a great inhale of air and suddenly his head snapped forward. He met my gaze with very carefully schooled emotion in his eyes, giving away absolutely nothing.

"I couldn't really tell you, Anna. I'm not an expert. I've never heard of it happening though." Kristoff stared me dead in the eyes, but something was very, very off in his voice; the places where his inflections would have normally sat now void of anything but a flat monotone. He sounded like that one shy kid in speech class, when it's their turn to stand in front of everyone else; like he'd rather cut his own tongue out than continue to speak.

 _He's lying._

I couldn't tell which part he was lying about, but I knew he was. Kristoff is an inherently honest person, it's one of the many things I love about him. Even when he probably _should_ lie, even just to spare someone's feelings, he can't bring himself to do it. It was probably why he ignored people that asked him questions about his life or his past, rather than try to answer, because he knew that if he tried to make something up no one would believe him.

Elsa is a _great_ liar. I'd seen her do it; spin a story that is so fantastically detailed, but obscure that no one in their right mind would ever question her. Her voice always so earnest, her eyes so wide and sincere, just the perfect amount of emotion underlying every sentence that it _makes_ you believe her, giving you no other option than to eat her words up like candy and grin while she plays you for a fool.

There was a memory tickling the very edge of my thoughts; a conversation I had with Elsa that seems like forever ago. She had been boasting about her test scores of some calculus thing, and I had always loved to mess with her, her competative side always giving me a kick, especially when it came to math. Elsa knew math better than anyone I'd ever met, and it was clear that she thought so too.

 _"I schooled them. It's as simple as that." She waved her fork around, a tiny tomato stuck to the end of it. Kristoff swatted at it annoyingly when it came close to his face. Elsa ignored him. "I'm serious, Anna. It's ridiculously easy at this point. I should probably be teaching the class."_

 _"Hmmm." I hummed in quiet contemplation, and grinned internally at the way Elsa watched my expression closely, her eyes following every change in my demeanor. "I don't believe you."_

 _The end of Elsa's fork hit her tray with a loud clatter. "What?"_

 _"Prove it. How do I know you got them all right unless you show me? You could be lying for all I know."_

 _Elsa's expression shifted, a small smirk curling up the corners of her lips. "Sweetheart, I couldn't lie to you. It's not in my coding. Not anymore."_

 _Kristoff moaned his disgust at us, and I saw her grin when I blushed heavily, but I wasn't ready to give up quite yet._

 _"You're the best liar in the world, Els. How do I know_ that _wasn't a lie?"_

 _Cold blue eyes stole the very breath from my lungs with their intensity, a heavy seriousness that wasn't there before suddenly appearing beneath her irises._

 _"I guess you'll just have to trust me."_

"Anna?" Kristoff woke me from my reminiscing, his nervous voice filtering in through my thoughts. I realized that I had been quiet for much longer than was normal for me, the need I have to fill every silence usually overpowering everything else. But I could still hear the memory of Elsa's voice in my ear, whispering reassurances and terms of endearment, calming me down and winding me up in the very same second. "You alright?"

"Oh, um, yea." I nodded my head a little too quickly. "Yea, it's just a lot of info to take in, you know?"

He nodded in sympathy and I wiped the metaphorical sweat from my brow that he didn't push the subject. Another good thing about Kristoff, he didn't pry.

The rest of the day was spent with Kristoff and I playing video games on his Xbox One, and me occasionally blurting out random questions that happened to occur to me and annoyingly him incessantly the entire time.

 **Me:** "How long are the spirit's lifespans?"

 **Kristoff:** "Not _too_ different from humans, I guess. But hardly any of us die before we're at least ninety five unless it's from some accident or something. The elders can sometimes live into the hundred thirties, but that's rare."

 **Me:** "How come spirits don't really look different from humans?"

 **Kristoff:** "I think that our species must be like, somehow related. Like dogs and wolves or something, you know? It explains some of that kind of stuff in the Torram Legends. You should ask Elsa when she gets back."

 **Me:** "Do you and Els have any other friends that I haven't met?"

 **Kristoff:** "Nobody but Kai and you, unfortunat- Ow, Anna! Jesus!"

I could feel myself settling into this place. It spoke of how close Kristoff and I used to be that it was so easy for me to become completely comfortable around him again, newfound knowledge and all. If anything I felt closer to the twins than I ever had, now fully understanding the fuzzy parts of their life that they'd edited from my view. The apartment screamed of the twins and their personalities, and I found myself comforted in a way that was difficult for me to comprehend. It felt like I was _supposed_ to be here. A niggling thought tickled the back of my brain, that maybe that wasn't normal, maybe I should try to evaluate my strange desire to be around the twins, and decide if it was truly healthy or not. Another part of me didn't care at all, and laughed at the thought of ever intentionally putting any distance between myself and them.

I called Olaf about half way through the day and assured him that I was fine, that I had not been kidnapped, that I would be home by at least Tuesday, and that he had to water my plants for me. The entire time I was talking to him Kristoff held his ear directly on the other side of the phone, trying to listen and see if my impression was accurate. The minute Olaf mentioned Marshmallow and his new diet Kristoff rolled to the floor and shook with silent laughter. I rolled my eyes at him.

 _"Marsh says bye, Anna!"_

I heard a disgruntled meow on the other line and giggled quietly. "Bye to Marsh."

After that I called my incredibly sweet boss, the owner of the bookstore I worked at, and asked him if I could possibly have the next few days off of work.

"I'm really sorry, Mr. Oaken, something just came up and I-"

"Anna, it's fine, ya?" His cheery voice sprung through the line; I could hear the smile in it. "You have many, many vacation days anyway. I will call Belle in."

"Thank you sir! I'll work anytime you need me to the rest of the month!"

I heard Oaken's booming laugh on the other end of the line. "I might take you up on that, ya?" And then he hung up with a promise to see me on Wednesday.

Kristoff was slightly interested in my job, asking a few questions about my co-workers and the like, but he quickly became bored when I explained to him that it was only me and a quiet girl named Belle that ever worked the shop, and that I mostly just cataloged books for Oaken.

The twins had a legit maid that checked on us around five, but Kristoff waved her off when she looked horrified at the mess in the living room.

"It's alright, Mrs. Gerda. This one is on me."

Mrs. Gerda sniffed mightily and pointed a bony finger at Kristoff on her way out the door. "Your sister will smack you silly if she sees it like this, sir. You remember that."

Kristoff nodded respectfully. "Yes ma'am."

The day passed in a lazy, content kind of way. It felt like one of those days where you literally have nothing to do, so you don't really know _what_ to do, but you're still happy about it. Kristoff's company was something I had missed dearly, and though I could literally _feel_ myself going insane due to anticipation at Elsa's return on Tuesday, I was happy and calm in a way that I hadn't been for years.

Kristoff and I called it a night around eleven, him complaining that tomorrow we would _actually_ have to clean the place up a bit, so we needed to sleep and gain our strength back from our vigorous round of zombie killing. I retired to Elsa's room with a satisfied smirk on my lips, feeling good and _light,_ the knowledge that it was one day closer to her return buzzing with energy on the tips of my fingers. I thought about what I was going to say to her, played countless scenarios in my head, ranging from me as a shy awkward mess, to literally jumping on her the moment she stepped through the door. The last thought sent a buzz of heat through my lower belly, remembering one time when we had been rehearsing some stupid stunt for my mascot tryout, and I had fallen from a tree in her backyard, forcing her to catch me in such a way that her hands were like, _directly_ on my ass. She hadn't been able to look at me for almost three days after that one, but a small part of me didn't regret it at all. I blushed into the pillow, Elsa's scent calming me almost immediately into a dreamless sleep.

It was 2 a.m. when the screaming woke me up.

I sat bolt upright, throwing Elsa's covers off my torso. The apartment was silent, the groan of the air conditioner the only thing I heard. The room was pitch black, the clock on the bedside table barely bright enough for me to see my own hands. I stood slowly, slipping off the bed as quietly as possible, and slinking silently to the door. I pressed my ear to the cool wood and listened. It was quiet for a long moment, the air still and heavy with my own fear. Just as I was about to dismiss it to my crazy dreams and slip back into bed a piercing, drawn out shriek cut through the air, the note of desperation a chilling thing, and then a thunderous crash shattered the stillness, as if a suit of armor had toppled to the ground.

I heard a high, broken kind of sob. " _Kristoff!_ "

 _Oh my god._

I flung the door open, nearly tripping on rounding the corner into the living room. The scene that met my eyes was terrifying, turning my bone marrow to ice, freezing the blood in my veins.

Kristoff knelt on the ground, his breathing erratic and labored, his head whipping every which way.

"Where? Where?" He searched frantically, his eyes darting around every crevice of the room, fixating on the door, wide with a panicky fear. The shadows along the wall were long and dark, the moon streaming through the glass wall barely enough to illuminate the room, casting a sickly silver glow on everything.

And in his arms, barley leaned off the floor, was Elsa, scratches covering her arms, her clothes torn and tattered, and an alarming amount of blood falling from a wound right above her left temple, caking her silky braid to the side of her neck. One of her arms was bent at a funny angle, and there was a slow, angry red bruise building all across her throat. Almost every inch of her was covered in dirt, as if she'd been buried alive, and she shook violently, her teeth chattering loudly enough that I could hear it from where I stood.

The moment I saw her I would swear my heart stopped. All the breathe left my body. My blood heated to boiling, and flooded back through my veins with a vengeance, all my muscles twitched and ached, there was a tug in the center of my chest, and despite everything, one of the greatest senses of calm I had ever felt settled over me like a blanket of snow, my entire body seeming to cry out.

 _Finally. Finally. Finally._

Elsa, however, did not see me, and continued to babble on, her speech slurred and broken in a that I had never heard her speak before; it made me flinch.

"It's them Kris- _Them_ , they're hunting _her_!"Elsa's hand came up to clutch desperately at Kristoff's shirt, smearing blood and dirt across the front of it. " _Anna!_ "

I felt my breath catch in my lungs, unable to move in or out, hearing her say my name such a massive shock to my system that it nearly knocked me to the ground.

"We were w-wrong; you have to help me Kris, _please_!" Elsa sobbed, her ragged vocal chords grating and exhausted. "She wasn't at home, I- I went to her apartment, I was going to get her- I, she was _gone_ \- We can't let them take her! I can't- I can't stop them- I have to- I -"

"Elsa, Elsa stop!" Kristoff gripped her shoulders and tried to get her to focus, but Elsa's eyelids were fluttering, her words getting more and more difficult to understand in her hysteria. Suddenly her eyes snapped open wide, empty and unfocused, her body going rigid in a way that looked almost painful her muscles tightened to such a degree. Her pupils dilated wide, seeing much farther then either Kristoff or I.

" _They want her_!" She cried, her panic nearly tangible, every syllable tinged with desperation. "They want _Anna_!"

There was a moment of breathless quiet, a stillness so close to death that I swore none of us breathed, no one blinked.

"Elsa?"

The twins moved together, Kristoff in a blind panic, Elsa with painful hesitation, both to stare at my spot in the entry way. I had my hand braced against the side wall, my shock so great that I was scared I might collapse

Elsa's eyes met mine, and something in the very back corner of my brain clicked into place, like a key in a lock, the _snick_ so loud that it echoed to every corner of my head.

"Anna." Elsa gave a weak smile, and then fell, limp as a rag, to the soft carpet.

There was a long moment where Kristoff and I stood stock still, trying to understand this sudden and extreme turn of events. Elsa was home, two days early, covered in blood and badly injured, screaming some kind of vaguely threatening nonsense about _me_.

"Anna." Kristoff's voice was surprisingly steady, his calm helping to ground me, my heart beating in a wild panicked frenzy at the sight of Elsa. "Clear off the table and grab the first aid kit and a sheet from the hall closet." I hurried to follow his instructions, sweeping the debris off the table in one motion, and sprinting to the hall, rooting through the cabinets in a daze. I finally located the kit and a large, white sheet, running back around the corner just in time to see him lay Elsa on the table, grip her arm tightly, and snap her shoulder back into place.

She didn't even flinch.

I felt the corners of my eyes itch, helplessness racing through my blood, feeding on my panic. I wanted Elsa to move or to speak or to do something other than lay there and look very, very dead. It was getting hard to breathe. "Kris, I-"

"Don't think about it." He snapped at me, and held his hand out for the kit. "She will be fine, I _promise_ you. Just don't think about it."

He quickly ripped a small strip away from the bandages and tied it around Elsa's head, the thicker part covering the gash above her temple. He pulled apart the sheet and wrapped a small portion of it around a baggy of ice; settling it delicately across her neck and newly set shoulder. There was a small tube of something that he plucked from the first aid kit and started dabbing it on various cuts across her arms and face."Anna, take those bandages and tie them together, long ways, like a rope."

I did as I was told, and handed the modified bandages back to Kristoff. He seemed to be in another world, his hands trembling only slightly as he created a makeshift sling, and slipped Elsa's arm through it, settling it gently against her side and wrapping the remainder around the lower half of her rib cage.

"W-What happened- I don't-"

"Something went wrong." Kristoff shook his head, his eyes blazing with intensity as he continued to doctor Elsa's various injuries. "This shouldn't have happened. I don't get it, those guys, Elsa could beat those guys with her hands tied behind her back, I don't-"

Kristoff's words were cut off by a high pitched whine, ending in a ragged gasp. Elsa's eyes fluttered open weakly. Kristoff stilled, his hands moving slowly away from a nasty cut right above Elsa's hip bone. "Els?"

Every breath sounded like it pained her; she wheezed as her eyes darted around the room, pausing briefly on my face at erratic moments, coming back to look at me every few seconds before quickly resuming their frantic searching. Each time they met mine, an odd zing of electricity sung at the edges of my fingertips, tingling with the desire to do _something_.

"Close it up." She coughed, and Kristoff jumped into action immediately, grabbing something from a kitchen drawer and palming it, running toward his own bedroom.

"Anna."

My eyes flew back to Elsa's prone form on the table, her battered body groaning with the effort to breathe. I felt the immediate and overwhelming desire to cry. I wanted to bawl my eyes out right there and grip Elsa's body to my own, holding her tightly enough that maybe somehow it might heal her. A small part of me wanted to fight against this, rage about how unfair it was for me to finally see her again under these circumstances, cry at the injustice of it all, and demand a redo with a healthy, happy Elsa. I also couldn't stop thinking about how pretty she looked, just laying there, but I figure that had something to do with me being crazy. I had difficulty looking at her eyes, every time I met them a crushing, foreign emotion sat atop my chest and making it difficult for my heart to beat. And after all the times I had thought about seeing her again, how it had been my go-to daydream for years, every possible word I could have said, everything that I'd wanted to tell her for years, it all built up into this one single moment. And I didn't have a clue what to say.

"Hey." Elsa's voice broke, her eyebrows drawing up in the middle in concern. I felt a cold hand brush shakily against my cheek. "Don't cry."

"Elsa." A sob heaving through my chest, and more tears leaked out. "Y-You're going to be okay, alright? You just gotta walk it off, right?"

Elsa smiled. Like a real genuine smile. And my brain swirled in a whirlwind of color and noise, every single moment with Elsa, every word and laugh and memory all piling up into one, distinct slot in the center of my skull that warmed me to the tips of my toes. Her smile, her laugh, her dorky half way grin, her cold hands that would occasionally slip into mine and suddenly feel burning hot. Every single aspect of her, all rolled together to make _Elsa,_ pulling on the back of my chest, rushing forward with a blinding intensity that I couldn't understand. There was a hitch in my breath, my lungs working twice as hard as normal to get air, while I stared at her, and drank her in, every inch of her bruised body so familiar and _comforting_. Elsa what what I knew.

She was my home.

Kristoff darted back into the room. "Done."

Just as he spoke the front door slammed shut with a loud crack, making me jump about a foot in the air. Elsa's trembling hand ran soothing patterns down my arm, trying to calm me. A large, thick sheet of metal slid silently over the doorway, sealing with an audible click. I turned back around just in time to see massive steel sheets falling like blinds, to cover the entirety of the glass wall to the left. I gawked.

"Precaution." Elsa murmured, her hand ceasing it's movements and falling back toward the table. "It'll keep us safe, for now. Kris, did you get the bath?"

"Yea, I got it." He walked over and hooked an arm under Elsa's knees and behind her head, lifting her as gently as possible. I saw her jaw clench in an effort not to make a sound, and it tugged hard on something in my chest. He walked her slowly down the hall, towards the bathroom. I don't remember making the conscious decision to follow, but my feet trailed after them loyally anyway.

When we stepped into the massive bathroom I saw the tub nearly filled with steaming water. Kristoff walked forward and, as gently as possible, settled Elsa into the tub, clothes and all.

Elsa sighed so heavily that I could almost _feel_ her relief. There was a small moment of quiet, then a light buzzing in my ears, and the water started glowing light blue. My eyes widened in shock. Without a word Elsa sunk her entire body, head and all, beneath the surface, and remained there for much, much longer than she should've been able to. There was an abrupt cold snap throughout the room, the once steamy water frosting around the edges, and Elsa shot out of the water faster than a bullet.

I blinked.

She looked fine.

Okay, not fine, but she looked healed, at least weeks away from where she should've been. While I watched she gingerly took the makeshift sling off her arm and rolled her shoulder a few times, only grimacing lightly. The small, superficial cuts that had covered her were gone, only the much deeper ones remaining, and only as faded, reddish pink marks. The angry bruise that had circled her neck was now a faded yellow in some places, and completely gone in others. And the massive gash that had split the side of her head open was a closed up, angry red line above her temple, a slightly darker bruise than around her neck surrounding the area. She hesitantly reached up to poke at the mark, and winced when her finger made slight contact with it.

"That was a bad one." She muttered.

"Uh," Once again, both twins moved to look at me.

There was a moment of quiet, and then Elsa shifted, standing abruptly and motioning out to the side of her body, clenching her fist tightly over nothing. Thousands of drops of water rolled out away from her body, sponging away from her clothes, her hair, her skin, coming to gather on her fist, and rushing away from her legs when she stepped out of the bath. She relaxed her hand and the water crashed back into the tub, Elsa now completely dry. I didn't even get a moment to marvel before she was striding across the room, taking five large steps before crashing into me, her arms wrapped tightly around my chest, one hand coming to tangle in the hair at the base of my skull, pressing my face desperately to the crook where her neck and shoulder met, her other wrapping around my ribs, my arms now locked around her waist. I felt her face pressed against the top of my head, her nose breathing in deeply, and her grip getting impossibly tighter.

" _I missed you_." She murmured against my hair, her nails lightly scratching where they were buried in my hair, her fingers splayed out on the side of my ribs. I could feel the sincerity in her words, the trembling of her always steady pronunciation, the tightening hold of her arms. I gripped around her waist as hard as I could and breathed in desperately at her collar before bursting into tears.

"I missed you too, Els."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hi, guys! To all of you guys that have been leaving me reviews, thank you so, so much, that is the most wonderful thing, please continue to do so. I'm so glad that y'all like this so far. This chapter was insanely hard to write because I really didn't know how to go about putting Anna and Elsa back together, and I'm not quite sure if I'm happy with the way this turned out. We've finally hit the crux of the main conflict in this story, but there is still a ton to find out. Let me know what you, guys think. Also, I've been trying to get ready to move into my dorm room in a few days, which is why this update took a little bit longer than normal, sorry about that. Anyway, y'all tell me if you like it, things I need to fix and the like. I apologize again for the stupid grammar and spelling mistakes, but at this point I feel like if I reread this one more time to check for them my head might explode.

Thank you guys for all this, and I look forward to seeing what you have to say! Much love 3

 **-AJ**


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

 _We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility of our future. - George Bernard Shaw_

* * *

"Um," I jumped in Elsa's arms, Kristoff's slightly uncomfortable voice drifting through the constant stream of _'oh my god, oh my god, it's Elsa, Elsa's here, Elsa's hugging me, I'm looking at Elsa'_ that had been a repeating mantra in my mind for a good few minutes. Elsa, however, barely seemed to notice that Kristoff had spoken at all, her head merely shifting where it rested atop mine to glance at him.

"Yea?"

I grinned; every time I heard her voice a happy buzz of butterflies started flitting around inside my stomach.

"I mean, I'm happy that you guys are reunited and all," I could practically hear Kristoff roll his eyes, but it was _really_ hard to focus with Elsa still occasionally scratching her nails across the base of my scalp, sending pleasurable tingles down to my toes. "But just to clarify, you collapsed into the house covered in blood, screaming about Anna, so I feel like you kind of owe us some sort of explanation. I haven't ever had to put the window guards up here, Els."

Elsa sighed, and loosened her hold on me, finally stepping away completely after a moment. It occurred to me that I had stopped crying sometime during her hugging me, but I could still feel the tear tracks on my face; I wiped at them in irritation.

"I'm sorry, I was panicking, being stupid. I got too worked up, forgot the plan, some part of me just expected to find Anna in her apartment, and when she wasn't there, I..." She trailed off, her cheeks turning a light pink. I stared at her, but she didn't look at me, unwilling to meet my eyes. "We should sit down, it's a lot."

The three of us made our way to the living room, Kristoff immediately taking the armchair, forcing me and Elsa onto the sofa together. There was about a foot of space in between us, and it made me twitchy. I saw Elsa's fingers dance a little across the space between where we sat, like she didn't know what to do with them, and it had nerves racing up and down my spine.

She cleared her throat and I snapped my attention upward, back to her face.

"The plan was going fine." She ended up pulling both of her hands to her chest and clutching them together like a vice. "I left an hour before you, counted the ones I was positive had been following her. I got three, some behemoth of a man in a back alley, a boy about our age close to her job, and a tall guy near her apartment complex. I hid, watched some others find the bodies, watched them call a meeting, I knew that you and Anna would be gone by then, the distraction went down without a hitch, the two of you got out of there smoothly. They have no idea where she is now, I heard them talking about it." She hesitated for a minute, then her eyes glazed over a bit, the haze frightening, transforming her cold blue eyes into something I didn't recognize, something dead.

"They were so close, Kris. They knew which apartment was hers, they'd already decided to do it, tomorrow night, we almost..." Her jaw clenched briefly and she shook her head, as if to clear it of cobwebs.

It occurred to me that Elsa wasn't really talking to me, just Kristoff, and a part of me knew why. She hadn't been explicit in her description, but it was clear enough that she'd just admitted to killing at least three people. I stared at her; the news not being something I knew how to handle. I knew that Elsa had killed at least once before, I'd seen it, in the gym that day. In some way, I had always known that that wasn't the first time, though. I remember her confidence to this day. She knew exactly what she was doing; she knew exactly what would happen. She had _experience_. And it was one of the most frightening things I'd ever seen in my life. I knew, deep into my bones, that Elsa would literally rather die than hurt me; it's written into every action she performs, every word she says, so _I_ wasn't scared of her. But that was the first time since I'd known her that I understood why nearly everyone else _was_. Elsa was ruthless, it was obvious, a fact she'd clearly accepted about herself, but it wasn't something I'd seen in anyone else I'd ever known, and it wasn't something that I could easily understand.

I wasn't stupid, though. I knew what was going to happen, despite Kristoff never exactly explaining what Elsa was doing when she was "taking care of the problem", it was pretty clear what the situation called for. It was kill or be killed; Elsa and Kristoff _had_ to be as cruel a The Kolai, their lives depended on it. And the rational part of me, the unemotional part, understood that, and accepted the finality of it, knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that there was nothing I could ever do to change it. But the other half, the half that stopped for a moment and really _knew_ what she had done, thought about how one of them was "about our age". Maybe not even old enough to legally drink. He was doing what he thought was right; he was performing a duty he believed to be necessary, followed so religiously that he had been willing to die for it. He _had_ died for it, and somewhere in the world, someone was crying because he wasn't going to come back home.

I understood what Elsa had done, the practicality of it, but only in theory. As soon as I remembered that this was all real, and these were _real_ people we were talking about, I couldn't really look up from the carpet, a sense of shame dredged up from the pit of my stomach.

 _Your fault._ It whispered, laughing lowly in my ear. _She did it for you._

I bit my lip, and looked away, thankful that Kristoff and Elsa were too focused on her explanation to notice me.

"We were wrong." Elsa swallowed hard, and I could hear the catch in her voice. She was scared, that much was obvious, but not the kind of scared that I'd seen in her before. This was a deeper kind of fear, an instinctual kind. It was like she was running for her life. Without a second thought, I scooted my hand across the cushion and laced my fingers through hers. No matter what Elsa did, no matter what she said, I could never stand to see her upset, always trying to find someway to keep her happy. She looked shocked for a moment, but before I could regret it she tightened her grip intensely, the cool palm of her hand pressing against my warm one, and gave me a weak smile in gratitude, turning back to Kristoff and continuing, with a less shaky tone. "We were wrong about all of it, why they wanted her, what they want to do, who it is, everything."

"Well, then what's going on?" Kristoff's brow was furrowed, his confusion apparent. "There's no other reason for them to be after her, you'd be able to tell if she'd been with a foreign spirit," It might have been my imagination, but I swore I felt Elsa's grip tighten on my hand slightly. "And if it's not the cell we found the other week, then who is following her? How many Kolai members could possibly be in New York City?"

"Not members." Elsa shook her head, and something dawned on me, her words making more sense then they had before, some of the things she had been screaming when she came in finally clicking into place; her absolutely unreasonable panic, except now it was reasonable, it made perfect sense. This time I knew I didn't imagine it, Elsa's grip tightened to near painful, and I could feel her hand shaking in mine. "Leaders."

There was a long pause, heavy with a hopelessness that twisted my stomach in a sickening way.

"It's them." Elsa's voice was hollow, lifeless. "The Rayalti."

 **/**

Elsa explained everything. How she'd tailed a couple of them to the meeting, how she'd been confused because there were _way_ too many of them, how they worked like a court, led, oddly enough, by a young man, maybe a few years older than us, with red hair and winning smile.

Elsa's lip curled in an arrogant way, her obvious distaste a sight to behold. "You should've seen him. Parading around, shrieking like a banshee about decimating our entire race, boasting over his number of kills." If anything, her sneer got more pronounced. "The Rayalti is losing it's grip; letting itself be managed by a _child._ "

Elsa's vocabulary always got a bit more sophisticated when she was angry, her presence became more arrogant, her aristocratic tendencies strengthening; something that I found endlessly entertaining.

She told us how she'd listened in on the portion of their meeting she could hear before things went south.

"They were talking about _you_." She told me. "The leader, he-" She bit off the end of her words, her anger a nearly physical thing. "He's _obsessed_ with you, Anna. I don't understand it. The only thing I could hear is they think that you're somehow connected to the Arendelles."

" _What_?!" Kristoff barked, his voice hopping up an octave. "That- _Anna_? How could Anna possibly be-"

"I don't know." Elsa shook her head. "But they believe it, every one of them."

"Wait." I held my hand up. "Who are the Arendelles?"

"One of the most powerful spirit families in the last four centuries." Elsa spoke, her voice quiet. She had long since given up on merely holding my hand, and had instead pulled it fully into her lap and started playing with my fingers. It was soothing, but distracting. I didn't have the heart or the strength of will to pull away, though. Elsa was acting different. A lot different; leaps and bounds farther than where she had been three years ago when she couldn't even look at me after a few minutes of shy flirting. There was a certain resignation to her actions, as if she was tired of trying to control them. It worried me. If Elsa decided to start being that confident, flirtatious person that would occasionally emerge from some back corner of her mind, I didn't know if I could deal with it on a daily basis. "They were renowned; the whole lineage had a strange predisposition for fire. Usually spirit children don't really copy their parents when it comes to the elemental aspect, it's supposed to be completely random, but the Arendelles were different, the family was _made_ for fire, nearly every new child over 400 years was a Ti. A fire spirit." Elsa clarified at my confused look. "But it doesn't make any sense. They died out. The last Arendelle was a scandal anyway, he didn't even try to continue the line, if I'm not mistaken. There's no way you could be connected to them, there aren't any of them left, and you're not even a spirit."

There was a very, very strange coldness wiggling in my gut, making me feel a little bit sick.

 _Arendelle_

 _Why does that sound so-_

"They want to kill you." Elsa interrupted my thoughts, her tone worrying. It was flat and dry, no emotion, no life. Nothing. " _Badly._ "

She looked down, away, her voice getting quieter and quieter. "It doesn't even have anything to do with us. We've been wrong for so long, it's about _Anna_."

I tried to reassure her. "Elsa, it's oka-"

" _Don't_." She snarled, cutting me off, and her frame shook heavily. I don't think she even noticed. "Don't say it's okay." She took a deep breath and her shoulders snapped to attention, her body rigid with anger. When her eyes met mine it was with a kind of frigid authority flashing behind her irises. "They're not going to _touch_ you. I swear they won't."

She spoke with a finality that left absolutely no room for argument. I didn't know much about The Rayalti, or how powerful they were, but in that moment, I would've bet everything I had (which, granted, wasn't much) on Elsa.

"I had been listening for a while," She eventually continued after I had been staring at her for way longer than what was normal. "But I got distracted, I was too caught up in listening to the meeting, and..." She trailed off, her jaw clenching in anger. I wiggled my fingers a little where they rested against her, now immobile, hands, and she started a bit, before continuing to mess with them, calming down enough to speak again. "I got jumped. I was stupid, let my guard down, and five of them that were patrolling the building got me in the side of the head with something, a bat maybe."

I winced at the visual, and Elsa ran soothing circles against the lines on my palms. Except they weren't exactly soothing; I suppressed a shiver and carefully removed my hand from her grasp. She turned and gave me a strange look, but I darted my eyes away, a small pink tinge dusting my cheeks. I didn't meet her gaze, and she eventually continued.

"I woke up, I guess a few minutes later, they were dragging me somewhere, that's where a lot of the cuts came from, the ground was rough. The hit rattled my brain or something, though. I couldn't see straight. I tried to get all five of them with one blast. It- it should've been easy." She seemed to struggle with her words for a second. "It hit three of them. Two were out, one was down, but I thought that they had been taken care of, I wasn't paying close enough attention. I couldn't fight the other ones the way I normally can. One grabbed my arms from behind, like how the police do, but he twisted it way too far back, I felt my shoulder give, I-" She gritted her teeth. "It hurt. My instincts kicked in, he was shot through in seconds, pinned against the wall with the ice. His friend was easy, he was running away when..." She trailed off. "He didn't make it far. I was just going to catch my breath, just for a second, and then the last one had me by the neck, I-" Her eyes widened a little. "I thought he was going to kill me."

"Els-"

"I did, Kris." She shook her head. "I thought that was it, no one's _ever_ had me like that. I didn't even see him coming. The only reason I'm not dead is because I flat out panicked and punched him in the nose. There was ice in it; he didn't get back up after that." Elsa's shoulders were scrunched, her face a mixture of resignation and utter despair. "I was so freaked out I just ran. I ran to Anna's apartment. I don't know what I was thinking, my head was messed up, for some reason I thought I'd find her there. When I didn't I was frantic, I could barely remember how to get back home, I forgot that she'd even be here, nothing was making sense to me. I'm lucky no one saw me walking down the streets, I looked like a raving lunatic, and covered with blood on top of that."

There was a moment of silence, before I couldn't stand it anymore.

"So..." Both the twins raised their heads to stare at me. "What now?"

"Now, we have to make a plan." Elsa stood abruptly, my hand falling away from her lap. There was a fire in her eyes, a driven purpose that she could see now, and she was thrilled with the prospect of actually achieving something, I could see it in the way she straightened her shoulders. Elsa had always been better when she had a plan, an idea of what she needed to do. "Kris, we should get the passports. The farthest house is probably in Sydney, and we haven't been there in a few years, it could be perfect. Also the Kolai is almost wiped out in Australia at this point, I don't think there is anyway they could follow us there. I can get a flight within four hours, tops, and.."

Elsa continued, but it had turned to a muted buzzing in my ears. There was a bottoming out in the lower half of my stomach, making it feel like all my organs dropped to my feet, and suddenly it was very, very hard to breathe. "W-What?"

My voice shook violently, and Elsa finally turned to stare, concern drawing up her eyebrows in the middle.

"You guys can't- you can't just _leave_ \- I-"

"No, no, no." Elsa smiled and ran a hand through her hair absently, the way she did when she was nervous. "You'd be coming with us."

I ceased my babbling immediately my jaw smacking closed with a loud click, almost making me bite my tongue. " _What?_ "

Elsa huffed, blowing air up into her bangs that dangled across her forehead, fluffing them out, making them even messier than before. It was an old habit of hers, and I almost grinned at seeing it again. Almost.

"You can't stay here, Anna." She spoke as if it should be obvious, and I felt my hackles rise on instinct. "The people that are hunting you now, especially now that I left the ice behind like an idiot, they're going to be after all of us-"

"I can't just leave, either." I glared at Elsa.

She glared right back at me, her frenzied planning finally calmed, replaced with irritation. "Yes you can. And we're going to, all of us."

For as long as I can remember, Elsa and I got along in nearly every aspect of our lives. There had always been one thing though, that absolutely set my teeth on edge.

Elsa was _bossy_.

She always had been, ever since I first met her. Maybe it had something to do with that trademarked regal appearance, that (somehow insanely attractive) arrogance that she had, the way that she used to glare down at me, always insisting that she knew what was best. (Which was often times true, but that only served to make me angrier.) Elsa was, in every way I could see, a modern day queen, minus the traditionalism. She lived to give orders, she was fantastic at making people listen to her. Every time I had seen her work someone over, absolutely enforce her authority, it had been... something of a turn on, if I'm being honest. It was one of the reasons I couldn't ever go to her basketball practices in high school, because of the way she ordered people around, kept them working like a well-oiled machine. (Which probably speaks to my insanity, but it was goddamn _hot_.) And I think that's why she always got so pissed at me when it didn't work.

Because I didn't listen. I never did.

"No, I'm not." I crossed my arms and jerked my chin up in defiance. Elsa smiled a little bit at that. "I'm not leaving New York, I love it here. I can't just fly halfway across the globe because some random group of freaks is after me. I can take care of myself."

Elsa's smile got a little bit colder, the way it always did when she was about to royally piss me off. "If you think I'm letting you stay here, you've got another thing coming, _princess_." She smirked when the tops of my ears went red with indignation. Kristoff had been calling me princess since the first week we met. I vividly remembered the first time Elsa had said it though, because my reaction was _way_ too strong, which had led her to start using it as a weapon. Which only served to piss me off more.

" _Letting me_?!" My voice raised in volume, and I could feel my face getting redder. I stood up from the couch, glaring up at her and her stupid three inch height adavantage. That was the difference between Elsa and I. When it came to confrontation, I was _loud_ , angry, seething with palpable frustration, open and out for everyone to see. Elsa was quiet, slinking like a predator, her eyes cold and flashing in an incredibly intimidating way. Her anger was controlled to the max, with enough biting acidity to corrode your ears with every word. "You're right, Elsa. You're not _letting me_ do anything. I'm doing whatever the hell _I_ want."

Elsa took a step closer to me, using her height to an advantage to tower over where I stood. I'd called her petty once, after she'd done the same in an argument years ago. She'd merely shrugged and said she'd use whatever she had over me, which had, in turn, led to another argument.

"I will drag you, kicking and screaming, all the way to the opposite side of the planet if I have to." She spoke through gritted teeth, her jaw clenched tightly. There was something much deeper than anger swimming in the back of her irises, but I couldn't see it yet. "You're _not_ staying her to get yourself killed. I will not allow it. You don't even understand what you're up against. The Rayalti isn't a 'random group of freaks'. They are _soldiers_ ; every one of them, trained killers. And you're in over your head."

"You're not the boss of me!" I spat at her, my face now a flaming red vision of anger. If I had been listening at all, I would've understood that she was trying to be protective. (Given, in an overbearing sort of way.) but once I get even then slightest bit frustrated, I immediately have problems listening to anything or anyone, no matter how rational they're being. In fact, Elsa's rationality had always enraged me further whenever we ended up in any sort of argument. "I have a _life_ here! If you think I'm going to completely uproot at the drop of a hat then _you've_ got another thing coming!"

Elsa laughed.

 _Laughed_.

I shook with anger.

She was abruptly right in my face, not two inches from our noses touching, her sudden proximity forcing me to crane my head upwards to meet her eyes. She smirked in satisfaction. I could count the freckles across the bridge of her nose. There was a radiating coldness coming from her, I could feel it against my skin, her eyes were like ice chips, cold and unyielding. Her voice was steady with a promise, the uncompromising, unshakable certainty that settled somewhere atop my chest.

"I will not let them kill you. If that means that I have to kidnap you, then so be it. I can't fight them on my own, but I will run to Antarctica with you in tow before I let them take you. And you're coming with us, whether you like it or not."

"You can't _make_ me go!" I yelled at her again, the _no-argument_ tone driving me up the fucking wall.

"Oh, yea?" If anything, Elsa seemed to shift closer, her smirk shrinking a little, her eyes sharpening. "Wanna bet?"

I opened my mouth, ready to rip her a new one, but Kristoff stepped in before I had the chance. "Guys, stop."

The moment he spoke Elsa seemed to snap from a daze, and took a large backward step away from me, blinking rapidly. I gave a small sigh of relief that she wasn't so close to my face anymore, making it much easier for me to think. My breathing was heavy and my hands clenched to fists. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. I darted a quick glance at Elsa's face, and found myself immediately frustrated that she looked almost completely unfazed.

 _Damn you and your stupid, perfect face._

I noticed that her hands shook a little, though, and took a large amount of satisfaction in it.

"Elsa, Anna's right, it's unfair. We need to talk about this. And we can't _make_ her do anything-"

"I'm _not_ letting her stay here." Elsa snarled immediately, the fragile control she had gained falling away as quickly as it had come. "I don't care what you say. The Kolai are _animals_. You know what they'd do to her-"

"Elsa." Kristoff did not relent, refused to back down, his voice as steady as ever. "It's her choice."

"Her choice to get herself _killed_?!" Elsa's voice raised slightly, and I snapped to attention, my surprise clearly evident on my face. Elsa _never_ shouted; not in arguments. She said that if she couldn't get her point across without yelling then she shouldn't be arguing in the first place. "You're insane if you think that's happening."

"You don't have a say, Els. It's not up to you."

"The _hell_ it isn't!"

Elsa _shook_. Like full body trembling. She was gesticulating wildly, her hands flying all over the place. Something was kind of freaking me out about how she was acting. Everything Elsa did was controlled, reserved. It had been that way since we were kids. I was the loud one, the wild one; the twins were the long suffering managers of my dramatics. Elsa didn't shout, she didn't pace, she didn't act like this, ever. It was that feeling you get when someone that is _very_ calm suddenly becomes unhinged, like a bomb going off in front of you and all you can do is watch and try not to get blown away. "You know what they do, Kristoff! _We_ know what they do! This isn't a matter of discussion anymore; it's not a choice. If we stay here, we're going to die. _Period_."

"You and I can leave, whenever you want, I don't care where we go, whatever. And yes, she _should_ go, it's her best option. But you can't _make_ Anna go with us, it's wrong. You'd never forgive yourself for forcing her into something like that."

"I wouldn't have to if I knew she was safe!"

Elsa's voice cracked. It felt like something in my chest cracked a little too.

"She can stay if she wants to; it's her life."

"I'm not leaving without her!"

"Elsa-"

"No, Kris!" Elsa's voice wavered. "I don't understand why you aren't getting it! Its _The Rayalti_! God only knows how long it will take them to track me down and lead them _right here_! Do you understand? They're looking for us, all of us, right now! And I can't lose more people to them! Why am I the only one that can see the danger? Why are you turning a blind eye when when our _parents_ -"

There was an abrupt drop in temperature, the whole room nearly frosting over. Elsa had frozen on the spot, her face shocked, her eyes wide, like she couldn't believe what had just come out of her mouth.

"Elsa-"

She held a hand up, cutting Kristoff off without saying a word. She turned abruptly and walked down the hall, toward her room. I heard the door slam a few seconds later.

There were a few moments of silence. The apartment hadn't gone back to the right temperature.

"Well," Kristoff rubbed the back of his neck and turned to meet my eyes, his own incredibly uncomfortable and sad. "That could've gone better."

 **/**

"Okay, Hart." I breathed deeply, muttering to myself. The light blue door seemed incredibly large for some reason. "You've got this. It'll be okay."

Kristoff and I had mutually decided that it would be best if I were the one to go and talk to Elsa, as she would be more forgiving if I were the one to approach. And by "mutually decided" I mean Kristoff literally threatened to punt me down the hallway if I didn't go first.

I sighed, inhaled deeply through my nose, and knocked, the same rhythmic way that I used to when we were kids.

 _knock knock knock-knock knock_

"E-Elsa?" I cleared my throat, trying to rid it of the stutter. "Um, hey, I- I just wanted to say sorry. About earlier. I-I shouldn't have yelled, and I know you were trying to look out for me, and I just got frustrated 'cause you're always so bossy- not that I don't love that about you! I mean, sometimes. Not right then, obviously. But I mean, I know that you were protecting me, and all- I, um, I appreciate it, and I just-"

The door that I had been been giving an embarrassing monologue to abruptly swung open, startling me enough that I almost fell over backward. Then there was a hand hooked in the collar of my shirt, yanking me through the door frame and slamming in closed behind me in the same second.

"I'm sorry." Elsa spoke into my hair. Her voice sounded scratchy and rough, and it sent a warm heat swimming through my blood. Her arms were back around me like before, one hand in my hair, the other hooking around my ribs. I was frozen for a few seconds before wrapping my arms around her waist and shoving my face into the crook of her neck. She smelled like vanilla and pine trees and mint. "You don't have to apologize, Anna, I was acting ridiculous, I-"

"No, Elsa." I shook my head against her shoulder. "It's completely understandable. With everything that The Rayalti has done, I wouldn't expect you to act any different. Kristoff told me... pretty much everything."

She stiffened, and slowly backed away from me, dropping her arms. "Define everything."

"You know, about your past and what happened and why you had to come here."

Elsa paused for a second, and then, for a very small moment, she almost seemed relieved. "Oh... Well, I'm glad that you know everything now. I don't like keeping things from you."

I grinned, and then it slowly dropped as my eyebrows drew up. I was upset, scared. Terrified honestly. I didn't know what was going to happen to me, I didn't know why people were looking for me, why they wanted to _kill_ me. Once I had finally thought I understood, another mystery was thrown at me, as if I hadn't already had enough for one lifetime. That stupid name, _Arendelle_ , would not leave me alone. I _knew_ I'd heard it before, but I couldn't remember when, or from who, and the frustration was almost more than I could deal with. I abruptly felt like I was going to cry, which was stupid, because up until a few days ago I _didn't_ cry; it went against everything I stood for. Now, however, it seemed to be the only way I could respond to anything.

"Els, I- I don't know what to do. This..." I rubbed furiously at my eyes and looked away. "I'm scared. I don't get this. I don't know why they want me. I don't know how to fix anything. It's all so messed up-"

Then there was a hand under my chin, pulling my face upward with an irresistible force. I was staring into Elsa's eyes, and was violently thrown back to the first time I had spoken to her, outside the principal's office, how terrifying her eyes had looked to me then, how they had become such a comfort over the years.

"They won't touch you." Elsa refused to let me look away, the intensity of her gaze almost impossible to meet. Every time Elsa looked at me I felt studied, memorized, as if, even though there was no way she wouldn't recognize me by now, she was still trying to burn my features into her brain. "Anna, I _promise_. They won't."

I just stared at her. The flyaway hairs across her forehead, constantly looking windswept and gorgeous, her pale cheeks with lightly sprinkled freckled, her lips, quirked up slightly to the left, and incredibly close to me. I could lean forward, just a few inches, Elsa was being so much more affectionate lately, maybe-

And then she stepped back, dropping her hand and looking almost as disappointed as I felt. However, there was a huge part of me that was grateful, I had almost just ruined any kind of relationship I could have with Elsa, platonic or not, on a stupid whim. I didn't care if she didn't want me the way I wanted her, even though I had a suspicion that she must feel that way, at least a little bit, I just wanted _her_. In whatever way I could have.

 _Stupid! Use your brain, you idiot!_

"So, listen..." Elsa scratched at the back of her head. "I've been thinking about it. I have a safe house we can go to, here, in New York. It's unpleasant, but there is absolutely no way they could track us there. It will give us a while to figure some things out." She paused and glared slightly. "I _hate_ the idea of staying here. It is completely unsafe. If it were up to me, we would be on a plane right now, but... Kristoff is right. You have a life here. I can't ask you to uproot after being back for a few hours."

She sighed and sat on the edge of her bed. I joined her, once again, sitting with about a foot of space between us. There was a tightened jolt in her shoulders, and I almost asked if I could give her a massage, it looked so uncomfortable.

"Anna..." She sighed again. "We _will_ have to leave. At some point, the safe house won't be enough. The Rayalti are relentless, like dogs. They always find who they're after, and the longer we stay in the city, the easier it will be for them to sniff us out. It's not a matter of if, but when. And when the time comes, we _can't_ stay here. I can buy us a week or two at the most, but after that, we have to go, okay? We _have_ to."

There was a certain pleading tone to Elsa's voice that was foreign and unsettling, because Elsa didn't beg. Hell, she barely ever even _asked_ for anything, let alone pleaded for something, and it finally sunk in just how desperate she was. Desperate to get us out of here, desperate to run, desperate to keep me safe, and she was sacrificing it all, for my comfort. It occurred to me that there was no one else, on this entire planet, that I trusted as explicitly as I trust Elsa. She would always do everything in her power to make everything okay, to keep me safe and happy, and Elsa had a _lot_ of power, that much was obvious. And I knew, deep in my heart, that Elsa was right. We couldn't stay here, we _would_ die. And it would be all of us because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I died, Elsa and Kristoff would end up the same way. And it was that thought that sealed it, the certainty that the end of my life would mean the end of the twins, as well.

"Okay."

Elsa's head snapped up, her eyes wide with surprise. I just watched her, her mannerisms and her expressions, her traits and quirks, everything that defined who she was, and I understood that if she died with me, not even ending up in heaven could drag me from the anguish it would cause. I would be stuck in an eternal loop of depression, spinning round and round with self-blame and self-hate, never ever forgetting that it was all my fault.

"When the time comes, and we have to, I..." I swallowed hard and held her gaze. "I'll go. We'll run away together."

I smiled internally at my choice of words, laughing at how perfectly cliche they sounded.

Elsa smiled and leaned towards me, cupping my face in her cold hands and pulling me forward to meet her. Just as I was positive that my heart was going to pound right out of my chest, she shifted and pressed her lips firmly to my forehead.

I nearly swooned.

She then leaned down, and did that incredibly frustrating thing where she whispered right against my ear. I squirmed where I sat, my breathing a little labored, my cheeks absolutely flaming.

"You've got some packing to do, _princess_."

"Elsa!"

She cackled and ran out of the room, leaving me barely able to move.

 _I hate that stupid nickname._

After a few generous moments where I regained my sanity I stood with a sigh, and looked around the mess of the room.

Or, what should've been a mess.

Elsa had neatly folded all of my clothes, and sat them in two separate piles beside my, already open, suitcase.

I rolled my eyes and glared and the tidy room.

"Packing my ass."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hey guys! First, I must apologize for how long it's taken me to update, I know it's ridiculous. I literally just moved into my dorm room yesterday and have barely had time to breathe, let alone write this chapter. I had to use one of the school computers to finish up the last of this chapter, now that I'm not home I don't have a computer anymore. I'm saving up for a laptop which will hopefully help out with this situation haha

Anyway, I hope my lack of sleep for the last few days will excuse this chapter; I don't really like it. I am having a very difficult time reintroducing Elsa at an acceptable pace, since I honestly just want to jump right into some Elsanna romance shit, but I know, I can't, and it pains me daily. Elsa's kind of an asshole, right? I gotta say that I like it, I love rude!Elsa.

So, yea, I'm totally rambling, but I'll blame it on sleep deprivation and the hell that is college. Y'all please tell me the shit that I'm fucking up, it helps a lot, and seriously, you have no idea how much your reviews motivate me. Without them, I don't know if I'd be able to finish this story. I soooo appreciate you guys, y'all are the real deal, you're fantastic.

Much love XOXO

-AJ


	6. Chapter 5

_**WARNING:** Hellooo to all you beautiful, wonderful, amazing people! Firstly, let me apologize for how disgustingly long it took me to get this chapter out, I am A Piece Of Shit, but it's okay!_

 _I won't bore you and talk a lot before this chapter, just wanted to warn you that there will be semi/graphic descriptions of lots and lots of fire, as well as various injuries from the fire, and a kind of mental breakdown. If that's not for you than boop your cute butt right on outta here!_

 _With love-_

 _AJ_

 **Chapter 5**

* * *

 _"I am a mystery to myself." - Angelina Grimke_

* * *

 _I saw the smoke before we even turned onto my road. The bus bumped heavily against the gravel, and I remember how big and black the cloud was, more than I had ever seen before._

 _"My dad must be burning our compost pile." I told my friend, Ariel. "Mom's gonna be mad." I grinned at her, my cheeks scrunching up in mischief._

 _And then I heard the first scream._

 _My head whipped around to stare at the tiny first graders in the front of the bus, all shoving over to the left, pressing their little faces against the glass._

 _"Wassat? That house is burnin'!"_

 _"Who lives there?"_

 _"It's Anna. Anna's house!"_

 _I felt my heart drop to my feet._

 _No, no, no, no._

 _I tried to shove my way in front of the bus, my arms stabbing through the crush of children in winter coats, all pressing back and forth, trying to see the chaos. I shoved through everyone, nearly toppling over when I made it to the door. The bus driver grabbed at my jacket, gripped the hood, and I let it slide free from my body, tumbling through the partially open bus door to the snow._

 _"Mom!" I screamed, shooting up from the ground and sprinting toward my house. I could hear the house burning, the loud crackling sizzles sounding like music as it consumed and grew._

 _Smoke billowed from every window, positively pouring from any possible open crack. The heat was searing, I smelled burning hair and gasoline. My eyes teared up and my breath felt heavy and dirty. I tried relentlessly to tug my feet through the snow on the ground, but it pushed and shoved against my legs, trying to keep me back. The cold of it was confusing, my brain not understanding the difference in temperature._

 _"Dad! Someone, someone do something! Help me-"_

 _A strong arm whipped around my waist, crushing me to a familiar body. I smelled lavender and peaches._

 _"Mom!" I wrapped my arms around her in desperation, tears positively pouring down my face. I didn't understand, I couldn't breathe. I didn't know how it was possible for my mother to feel_ cold _to me. "Mom, where's dad? We have to-"_

 _"Gone, Anna."_

 _I gawked, ripping my arms from around her and backing up a full step. Her voice scared me, she sounded like a corpse. Like she didn't recognize me. Her hair was burnt and blackened, the skin around her neck and arms searing to a tight pinkish red. Her clothes were charred, and her make-up smeared, like she had been crying._

 _"M-Mom?"_

 _"Gone, gone, gone, gon-"_

 _And then she was tackled to the ground with the force of a bull, a massive police officer pinning her arms behind her back._

 _I lunged at him, my little fists flying in a rage, before one of the others caught me around the waist and yanked me away._

 _Away from the smoke, away from my home, away from my parents._

 _"Mom!" I screamed, flailing as hard as I could, fighting with all the desperation that an eleven year old can contain, my body withering in protest. And my mother stared at me with her dead eyes and cold body, her sooty face and blackened hands, and cried._

 _"The Kolai, Anna!" She shrieked and rolled on the ground, her motions so violent she almost shook from from the officers grip, while his partner pulled me steadily farther and farther from the scene. She sounded rabid, I saw spit fly from her mouth as she twitched and screamed, her eyes wide and bulging."The Kolai! You are an_ Arendelle _! Remember!"_

 _"Mom!" I shrieked and fought harder, my left wrist nearly snapping in the officers grip with the frenzy of my panic. I couldn't breathe, I could barely see through the smoke. The crackling pop of my home burning to cinders sung in my ears, in my blood. "Let me go!"_

"Let me _GO_!"

"Anna! Anna, wake up!"

My eyes snapped open, the still present darkness making me feel blind with it's intensity. I shook, all the muscles in my body tense and trembling. I was sweating, my breathing erratic.

Above me, a blue eyes darted around in worry, barely illuminated by a lamp in the far corner, crossing every feature of my face three times before returning to meet my gaze. "You okay?"

I tired to calm my breathing from the desperate gasps that wanted to return. Elsa held onto my shoulder lightly and helped me sit up on the bed. "I'm fine. Just- a nightmare, I guess."

"Anna, you talk in your sleep. I've told you this a hundred times. I know what you were dreaming about."

I just glared at her.

"How long has it been since you've seen her?"

"Over a year, now. Why?"

"Don't you think you should-"

"No. I don't." I thought about the last time I had been to the institute. The white washed walls, the sterile, burning smell of everything, my mother's dark room with her drawn curtains and dead flowers. The way that she never looked at me, like I was painful to her."That place is depressing."

 _She's depressing._

It was quiet for a moment. I studied the room around us.

Elsa had moved us from the Wolf's apartment not even twenty minutes after I agreed to go. She and Kristoff had their things packed and out the door before I was even done getting dressed. We didn't take the car Kristoff had driven me in the first time, instead opting for an old, beat up van that was parked around the back of the building, and I assumed was a maintenance van when I first saw it.

"She's not pretty." Elsa had mumbled, but her eyes gazed at the ugly gray blob of a vehicle with affection. "The building manager almost didn't let us park her here. We had to convince him it was for work reasons."

The van actually only had two seats, meaning that I, to the great amusement of the twins, had the sit in the cavernous back half, and try to balance myself around any turn or curve we met. I was ridiculously unsuccessful, and about half way through the ride Elsa got tired of laughing at me, and offered to switch seats.

We drove for a very long time, until we were completely out of the actual city, and right on the edge of the massive Nothing that spans on as far as the eye can see.

We pulled up at an old, low navy building that jutted from the ground as if it had grown their all on it's own. There were no windows, and no apparent door, either. The building sat at the very edge of a small tree line and was surrounded by barbed wire and lots of tall grass. If anything, it looked abandoned, and incredibly out of place.

"Um..."

"Home sweet home." Elsa grinned at me, and grabbed my bag from where it sat on the ground, tossing it over her shoulder and walking toward the building.

I blushed. "Els, I can carry that!"

Elsa had shown me a secret door that was partially hidden against the walls, that you could only see if you knew what to look for. She had slid it open with a small remote from her pocket, and I was met by a cold, sterile smell.

The inside of the building had been nothing like I expected. It looked kind of like a laboratory from the movies where scientists make things blow up. There were large florescent lights that swung from chains all along the ceiling; their buzz an ever-present sound throughout every corner of the room. Which is the next thing, it was just one large room. There was a sectioned off area for the bathroom, but other than that, it was like a massive white box. There was a pathetically small back corner that was, apparently, supposed to be the kitchen area. Two mattresses rested on the floor, pressed against the far wall, and spaced evenly apart. Other than that, there was not a single disruption to the sterile white of the room. It made me feel examined, like a germ under a microscope, and I immediately decided that I hated it here. I didn't think I had ever seen a place so bare of any life.

It took next to no time to get settled in. We didn't have much to unpack, and Elsa and Kristoff continuously reminded me that we would not be staying her long. Each time they mentioned it a physical pain prickled in the center of my chest. Never seeing my apartment, or Olaf, or my boss, or the bookstore again made it almost impossible to breathe. But I understood what had to happen, and I would stick by my word. There was no other option, it was leave or die.

There was moment of awkwardness that was so overwhelming I wanted to throw my head against the wall, when Kristoff pointed out that there were only two bed, with way too much mischief in his tone. Elsa's face was slightly pink, but nothing close to mine, when she shrugged it off, and said that she and Kristoff would be sleeping in shifts to keep watch anyway, so it wouldn't be a problem.

He had glared at her, she shot back a look I didn't quite understand.

Which is how I found myself, finally having caught my breath back, with Elsa still leaning over me, on an uncomfortable bed in the middle of the night, while Kristoff snored contentedly a few feet away.

She still stared at me, all cute and concerned, and I sighed.

"Els, there's-" I hesitated, biting at my bottom lip. I wasn't sure if I wanted an answer to my question. "There really can't be any way that I'm- that I could be an Arendelle. R-right?"

Elsa blinked in shock and scooted a few inches closer to me, not helping with the whole _thinking_ thing. There was a certain calm intimacy to talking to a person at night, in heavy whispers, that kept a constant stream of nerves gliding over my skin, the palms of my hands, the tips of my fingers. I wished to touch something, my hands twitched with the intent to do so. I shivered under the cold air against my bare shoulder blades, the tank top providing no protection.

"No, it's impossible. Why do you ask?"

I looked away, at the polished white floor. Elsa huffed in frustration. She always used to tell me that it upset her when I didn't look at her when I had something to say, that she liked being able to see the expression on my face. I hadn't really understood it, still really don't, but I liked to make her happy. I darted my eyes back to her own and was rewarded with a small grin. "I think I remember something."

Elsa's grin dropped quickly. "What do you mean?"

"I- I think it had something to do with my mom. I don't know, it's probably just in my head because we were talking about it earlier. I had a dream about the fire, but that's not strange, I dream about it a lot." Elsa's eyebrows drew up in concern, and she laid a heavy hand against my knee where the blanket covered it. I really was going to have to have a talk with her about touching me so much if she didn't want me to jump her without warning. This new, overly affectionate Elsa was incredibly difficult to get used to, and I wasn't prepared to have to exercise so much self control. "This time was different though. I made it to my house. Usually it cuts off before the part where I get all the way there and mom grabs me. I never dream that far into it without waking up..."

There was a part of me, growing and insistent, that absolutely did _not_ want to tell Elsa what I had dreamed about. I didn't understand it. I hate lying, I suck at it, I hardly ever have the urge to do it, and here I was at the cusp of finding out something major and my entire brain rebelled against revealing it. An instinct nagged at the tail end of my thoughts, whispering that something bad would happen, that I needed to keep my mouth shut for the sake of everyone.

I looked at Elsa, and the way her eyes were softened in the near-dark glow, the way her fingers lingered against my knee. I thought about her frantic, untameable panic at the mention of the Rayalti, and the Kolai, and them being after me for any reason. Elsa had taken comfort in the fact there was no actual heat behind any of their accusations. It had calmed her to believe that there was no way I could ever be an Arendelle, or related to any kind of spirit in any way, and that she could write the Kolai's hunt off as being wild and absolutely ridiculous. The more she could rationally distance me from the situation, the easier she slept.

There was a small part of me that thought Elsa might actually consider trying to reason with them, if it came down to it.

Which, according to both Elsa and Kristoff, would not work _at all_. The Kolai was a kill first, ask questions later, kind of organization. The twins couldn't so much as walk in the room without being shot at.

But Elsa, in her desperation to stop this, was willing to try.

"And it was just freaking me out." I smiled at her, and calmed a little when I saw some of the tension in her shoulders release. I promptly convinced myself that it had just been a strange interpretation of my fears, that my memory was just warped due to stress and fear. That had to be it, it was just me and my brain being overly dramatic. "Once I got that far into the dream it kind of morphed and I guess my brain started thinking about the Kolai and the Arendelle's and just fed into my nightmare. I was just worried about it before I was actually _awake_. It's no big deal."

Elsa still looked concerned, but nothing like she had when I had first mentioned Arendelle. Her hand started tracing up and down my leg, I guess in an attempt to be soothing, but actually doing the exact opposite. It was over the blanket, but even the impression of her cool touch gliding over my skin prickled goosebumps up and down my arms.

"Anna, I'm..." She hesitated, her hand pausing about midway down my calf. It rested there, shooting heat up and down the limb in shocks. If Elsa knew what she was doing there was no indication of it. "I want you to know how sorry I am for all of this. I- we never meant to pull you into this life, we tried so hard to keep you separated from it, and it didn't even do any good in the end. They're still after you. And it's _my_ fault. I exposed you to this."

She looked up to meet my eyes, the darkness softening every single line of her face. "I never wanted you to have to be scared."

"Els, it's okay." She shook her head, but I glared and grabbed her hand, her fingers tangling with mine on impulse. "It is. I promise. None of this is your's of Kris's fault, this is something different. They want me for something else, it doesn't concern you."

I smiled when she slowly pulled my hand closer to her body and played with my fingers, tracing lines and patterns across the skin like she does. She didn't look up at me, her eyes staring intensely at my hand in her grip, the contrast in our skin tones. Mine darker and freckly and splotchy, resting between Elsa's flawless, porcelain fingers. It was really kind of pretty, actually.

"You're a much better person than me." She murmured, still staring down. "If there was anything good that came of this, it's that I get to be around you again."

I felt my breath nearly hitch in the center of my chest. Elsa had started running her fingers across the lines in my palm. Which is _ridiculously_ innocent and should not be erotic or arousing at all, but I absolutely could not help myself.

She leaned forward, shrinking the small space between our bodies until her forehead rested against my shoulder, her weariness a heavy thing. I could feel her exhales against the exposed skin the tank top left open.

I squirmed.

 _Jesus Christ, get it together, Hart. She's not even_ trying _to do anything, you have to calm yourself down, you horny little weirdo._

"Um, Elsa-"

She abruptly turned her head inward, so that her mouth was _irresistibly_ close to my neck. I nearly groaned, having to choke down the sound with a weak cough. Every single time she exhaled it washed across my skin in warm waves that made it impossible to repress constant shivers. She had to be able to feel me shaking, but she never commented.

I needed to move. Like, _now_.

"I missed you _so much_." I could hear the clench in her jaw, the tension in her grip on _something_ that I did not understand. The level of frustration in her tone was alarming, even more than it normally would be because I didn't know _why_. Everything about it made my nerve endings incredibly sensitive, my skin feel wiggly and tingly. My hands twitched where they sat in my lap.

"I-I missed you too, Elsa."

She backed away slowly, as if afraid of scaring me. She stopped, about six inches away from my face, and stared.

I tried to think of something to say. I felt like there should've been millions of things to talk about, but all I could do was watch her face, and try to figure out why the _fuck_ she was looking at me like that.

And then she sighed. I felt the warmth of it, we were so close.

I was, once again, distracted by the blue of her eyes, the strange icy color hypnotic. Elsa always made it difficult to look away from her, but right now, I felt like I wouldn't do it for anything.

"I'm going to fix this." She said, her voice strong and certain. She sounded like she was telling her age or her name, like it was an irrefutable fact. "I am."

I nodded. She continued to stare at me.

"You're going to be okay." She whispered, and ran a hand down the length of her hair, slipping through the tresses, having not yet formed it's morning rat nest.

I leaned heavily into her hand, barely resisting the urge to turn and kiss her palm, which I'm nearly positive would've been bad.

"This is confusing, there is a lot going on. We're all tired and stressed, and you shouldn't be here. You should be safe, at home and away from all of this-"

"But then I wouldn't have you guys back."

Elsa's face tinted pink slightly and she cleared her throat. "Well- yea, I mean- yea. But that's not the point-"

"I get it, Els." I gave her a small, sad smile. "It's fine."

She opened her mouth, like she wanted to say more, and then apparently thought better of it. She stood from the bed with reluctance, her hand leaving a cold spot where it had been in my hair. I stared at her. Some irrational part of my brain wanted to ask her to just sleep with me.

I was so _tired_.

And I didn't want her company in _that_ way. I really just wanted to sleep; I wanted to feel Elsa beside me, protecting me, just making everything in my head stop slamming into each other for just a few hours so I could rest.

Over the years I had been prescribed countless medications to try and help me sleep at night, but it's impossible. I never feel safe enough, or relaxed enough, or whatever. I hardly ever fall asleep before the wee hours of the morning, after exhaustion completely takes me over.

Unless Elsa's around. Or her things, or her smell.

As if she read my mind, Elsa quickly slipped off the dark blue flannel that was draped over her shoulders, and laid over me, on top of the blanket. "I know how you like to have a million blankets at night, and it's cold in here anyway, so..."

She trailed off and scratched at the back of her head, looking away at the blank wall.

I smiled. "You won't get cold?"

I eyed the thin tank top she wore with concern. She just shrugged in a casual way. "Doesn't bother me. Ice powers, remember?"

I giggled a little and snuggled down into the blankets Elsa's cool scent washing over them and making my eyelids droop.

She stared at me, an undefinable expression on her face, and then leaned down to brush her fingers across my forehead. She swept my bangs back, revealing my right eyebrow that never saw the light of day. Her fingers left a warm, tingly path against my skin, and she seemed incredibly reluctant to remove them at all.

"Go to sleep, princess." She whispered. "We can talk more in the morning."

I nodded dazedly and yawned turning on my side and listening to her footsteps as she walked to the opposite end of the room, to stand by the door. As soon as she was far enough away I snatched the flannel from the top of the blankets and pulled it underneath, pressing it against my chest.

"'Night Elsa." I whispered, and closed my eyes.

 **/**

I awoke, once again, to the smell of good food, and the feeling of not having any idea of where I was. Right before I followed my old pattern, and went back to sleep, there was a small tug on my braid.

"Get up, Red." Kristoff dropped my braid and ripped the covers down to one corner of the bed.

"You asshole!" I yelled at him, nearly hissing when the cold air touched my skin. I shot up from the bed, ready to smack the shit out of him.

He cackled, running across the room to the sad little kitchen.

"Children." I heard Elsa murmur wearily from behind me. I whipped around to find her laying in almost the exact spot I had just been in, her nose buried deeply into the pillow I had been cuddling with. " _Behave._ "

It seemed as if she had collapsed there, still in her jeans and boots. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she pulled the pillow tightly to her chest, curling her entire body around it before sighing in contentment. Her fingers loosened their death grip slightly and her breathing evened out.

She was asleep. In the few seconds that I had been watching her.

"Jesus Christ." I muttered and tried angrily to untangle my hair. "You're dead, Kris."

"You won't be such a pissy little kid when you check out what Elsa made for us." Kristoff grinned at me, his cheeks scrunching in elation. "French toast."

"No goddamn way."

"Get your skinny ass over here before I eat all of it."

I threw myself across the room, grabbing three pieces from the plate before Kristoff could pile them onto his, already enormously stacked, serving. I then punched him as hard as I could in the upper arm.

" _Ow!_ " He yelped and clutched at the area. "What the hell was that for?!"

"Only dicks rip covers off of people. That is a well known fact. If I didn't punch you for it, the levels of justice in the world would be unbalanced."

I took a massive bite and grinned at him, before humming in nostalgic delight. I had forgotten what Elsa's french toast tasted like.

"She still makes it." Kristoff smiled. "Every few mornings, when she wakes up early, always a little too much."

I was completely overwhelmed with a happy buzz in my gut, the same feeling I always get when little moments prove to me that I was missed, that the suffering wasn't one sided. "I missed this."

"She missed you." Kristoff gestured to the bed where Elsa was passed out. "More than you know."

I blushed and looked away, trying to find someway to ask him a question, even though I wasn't fully sure what the question was yet. There was absolutely no way I was bringing up any part of the encounter from last night. _I_ didn't even understand what had happened, and a lot of it seems hazy with sleep, because I'm positive that there is no way in hell some of that could've happened.

I darted a quick glance over to the bed where Elsa was, unable to completely suppress my smile. She was just so annoyingly confusing. I never knew what to do around her.

"Syrup?" He offered, and I quickly moved on to other thoughts.

Kristoff and I spent a lot of the morning just dicking around. There wasn't a large amount of entertaining things to occupy our time. The twins thought that it was dangerous to go outside, which meant that was out, and spending hours on end in a large white box is boring.

I don't deal well with boring.

Kristoff and I tried to be relatively quiet, for Elsa's sake, but it was hard. We spent at least two hours throwing food at each other to see if we could catch it in our mouths. Kristoff won, but only by a little bit. We then rooted through the kitchen, strictly for a lack of anything better to do. It ended up with me chasing Kristoff with one of those spinny, egg beater things, threatening to cut his hair for him. We talked for a little while about the Rayalti, the Kolai, some more things about spirits in general. I tried to come up with questions that I hadn't asked before; Kristoff did his best to answer me. At one point we started making rubber band balls with a massive jar full of them, but the only thing that came from it was an impressive rubber band war that left a large welt on my neck and two on Kristoff's back. After that we laid in the floor and talked about how we couldn't even talk, because we were so bored. It was only one in the afternoon, and I was ready to blow my brains out to break the tedium.

I found myself almost wishing someone would attack us, or something, just for _anything_ to happen.

I immediately regretted it when Elsa woke up about a half hour later with news of her departure.

"What?!" I slammed my hands on my hips, standing in front of the door. Elsa rolled her eyes at me. "What do you mean you're _leaving?_ "

"I have to go into the city for a while." She huffed, shouldering her bag. "I need to gather some info, check on a few things, get some food."

"The last time you came back you were... wounded."

Elsa looked indignant, and glared at me. "I made it back, didn't I? It was fine."

"Elsa-"

"Anna, she has to go." Kristoff put a hand on my shoulder. "She'll be fine. We have to have supplies."

"But-"

"I'll be on my guard this time." Elsa grinned. "And in disguise. "

She pulled a blue baseball cap from nowhere and placed it on her head, grinning at me as she pulled the hood up of her sweatshirt.

She looked so goddamn cute and it was doing nothing but pissing me off.

Her eyes softened slightly, seeing I was not at all convinced. She grabbed at the end of my fingers, lightly swinging our hands. "It'll be fine, really. I promise."

And with a burst of cold air she was out the door, before I could blink.

"That's bullshit, she shouldn't go alon-"

"She's the most capable." Kristoff shook his head. "Also, she'd freeze the whole city before she'd let you go back with her, and we're not going to leave you alone here. This is the way it has to be."

I was annoyed, rightfully so, but I soon accepted that there really wasn't anything I could do about it. Also, hearing what Elsa had been capable of with a major head injury was a pretty big comfort; I knew that she could take care of herself, if need be.

She returned much, much later that evening with six grocery bags and a Monopoly board game box. I tried to stifle the intense relief I felt when she walked back through the door, but there was no smothering the cheek splitting grin across my face.

Kristoff grabbed Monopoly and stared at it warily. "I feel like this might cause more problems than anything else."

"Only when I beat your ass all across the board." I grinned and grabbed some of the grocery bags from Elsa, taking them to the kitchen and digging out each treasure with reverence.

There was a small trip in my heartbeat when I looked through the food that Elsa had gathered. My favorites were all there.

It was so incredibly _stupid_ and sentimental that she remembered the kind of soup and cookies that I liked, and it somehow made me feel a bit like crying.

My pause in searching was prolonged enough that Elsa shot a glance at me. "That is the stuff you like, right?" She sounded worried.

I cleared my throat. "Yea, no. You got it, this is all great." I grinned widely at her.

"Thanks."

Her cheeks pinked slightly. "You're welcome."

The next couple of hours were spent in a vicious Monopoly game that (surprise surprise) Elsa won easily.

It was late when we finally retired for sleep. Kristoff took his post at the door, mumbling that he wished Elsa had picked up some energy drinks on her outing. I nestled myself deeply into the blankets of the left mattress, the pillow nest around me as comforting as ever. Elsa had never taken her flannel back, and it was still hidden under the covers. I immediately latched onto it. I rolled onto my side, staring at the bed where Elsa had settled.

Her eyes were closed, and she had pulled a pillow into her chest, like she had this morning, clutching it far too tightly to look relaxed enough for sleep.

Just watching her I was out within minutes.

We quickly developed a rhythm in The Box (the name Kristoff and I had given the safe house). Elsa and Kristoff switched off each night, staying up and watching the door. They adamantly refused to let me stay up, saying that it was safer for them to do it anyway. Elsa would venture into town nearly every evening, not really explaining what she was doing, and often coming back with more games to entertain Kristoff and I.

It was four days later when Elsa returned with nothing but a bunch of pictures and an incredibly grim look.

"We're lucky we left when we did." Was all she said, before placing her phone down in front of Kristoff and I, filled with pictures of the twin's apartment.

It had been ransacked.

Stacks of paper were strewn everywhere, mud drug onto the carpets in footprints, broken vases and lamps, open drawers with contents spilling out. The pictures had been ripped down from the walls. Each swipe brought another picture of somewhere in the apartment, completely destroyed. When they started gravitating closer to the twin's bedrooms a fierce wave of nausea hit me.

 _They were in their house, in their_ rooms _, because of you._

"Someone dug through our shit." Kristoff growled.

Elsa just nodded.

I felt my breath hitch in fear. Each new image made me sick to my stomach. I had never been more grateful for Elsa's paranoia, it had quite literally saved our lives this time. It was right at that moment that I thought occurred to me, and had me shooting up from the couch in a frenzy, as if ready to sprint away.

"Whoa, whoa, hey," Elsa grabbed my shoulders, trying to get my eyes to focus on her. "Anna, it's okay-"

"Elsa, has anyone been _inside_ my apartment?"

It was as if some switch in her brain flipped. She clenched her jaw and looked away, her hands falling to her sides and balling into fists. "Yes."

A single thought broke through the front of my skull and had my stomach plummeting. "Oh my god, Olaf."

I could feel my heart rate quickening, my pulse pounding loudly in my veins, the urge to rush back to the city nearly irresistible. "Olaf- he's my friend- my neighbor, did they- do they know him? They couldn't- There are pictures of us together-"

"He's fine." Elsa murmured. I snapped my eyes to her.

She looked angry, _pissed_ actually. Her hands shook in tightly closed fists, blurring with the speed of her trembling.

"I checked. Him and the cat are fine. Kristoff told me they were... _important_ to you."

I couldn't exactly identify it, but something about Elsa's tone absolutely set me teeth on edge. There was a sneer hiding underneath her forced neutral expression; I felt like I was being accused of something. "Of course they are _important_ to me, Olaf is my friend."

Elsa's lip curled slightly. "Well, then I'm sure you're overjoyed at the news of his well being." She turned her gaze to mine, cold and distant. "All of your stuff is fine, and still there. It's not much of a surprise, we knew they had your apartment number. I just know someone was inside."

"How?"

Elsa's cheeks lit up. "It- it didn't, um, smell like you."

"It didn't..." I hesitated, confused. "Smell like me?"

Elsa huffed and turned on her heel, stalking to the other end of the room for her shift, even though her's didn't start for another two hours.

"What's _her_ problem?" I demanded of Kristoff.

He paused, as if he were thinking, and then just shook his head.

For a few days, things were tense between Elsa and I. And not the kind of tension I was used to between us. This had anger and embarrassment and something else written all over it. Elsa didn't even want to look at me; which was weird. What made me the angriest was that I didn't even really understand what I had done to piss her off so badly, and Kristoff wasn't explaining anything. I could feel my patience running thin, being trapped in The Box only adding to my frustration.

It wasn't until three days later that I got a few answers.

It was around four in the morning when I heard a lot of shuffling on the floor in between the beds. I rubbed furiously at my eyes, trying to get them to focus in the near dark. The fuzzy image suddenly cleared, and I was met with a disgruntled Elsa, rolling around on the floor, covered by a thin sheet.

"What the fuck? Elsa!" I whisper/shouted.

She shot up like a bullet, nearly on her feet before I could blink. But her stance was wobbly, and the droop of her shoulders was concerning.

"Els." I stood up out of bed and walked slowly toward her. I gripped at her fingers; they were like ice. When her eyes tried to focus on me I saw he bags and the redness and dark circles. "Oh, _sweetheart_."

"Anna." She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, looking absolutely pitiful. "I'm sorry, I wasn't going to sleep, but I got so tired, and I thought that an hour wouldn't hurt. I couldn't wake Kris up it's not his turn yet, and he's just as tired as me. I was going to just sleep on the floor, so I wouldn't wake either of you, but I guess I started dreaming, I didn't-"

"Elsa, get in the bed."

Her face absolutely bloomed with color, and after a second mine followed suit.

"I-I mean, you should get in the bed. To sleep. Is what I mean." I cleared my throat. "I can stay up; I'm not tired at all."

"Absolutely not." She growled, even while her eyelids drooped. I led her slowly toward the edge of the mattress. I don't think she even noticed. When I sank down on it, with only a tad bit of clumsiness, she followed. As soon as she made contact with the sheets something in her seemed to crack, her neck hardly strong enough to hold her head up.

"Lay down, Els."

She shifted, making herself comfortable in the cocoon I had been buried in moments ago. Her hand was still gripping mine lightly, her fingers brushing periodically across the back of my knuckles.

"That's it. I'm gonna go keep watch now, okay?"

I tired to stand up, but the grip on my hand grew in strength that I hadn't thought possible, yanking back into my sitting position.

" _Stay._ "

It was _purred_ , in a voice of absolute contentment, and a blush shot across my face like firecrackers, leaving me _way_ too warm.

"Um, Els, I really should keep watch, and-"

" _Please_." She whined and opened her bloodshot eyes, staring directly into mine. She looked more coherent than any time since I had woken up. "If you don't sleep I'm not going to."

Her hand insistently brushed at the back of mine, fingers idly playing with my own.

"A-Are you sure?"

Elsa seemed to take this as confirmation, and yanked me forward, pulling the covers over us in one swift motion.

I was hot. Incredibly so, my face absolutely burning.

No part of Elsa and I were touching except for our hands, but I could _feel_ her body next to mine, the energy buzzing through the empty space between us making me twitchy.

"Um, Els-"

"Shhh." She held a finger against my lips, her eyes closed and a smile splitting her face. "I wanna apologize."

If I hadn't been so uncomfortable and turned on, I would've laughed at how she was acting.

"For what?"

"Cause I'm all stupid and jealous, you know?" She didn't open her eyes.

"Jealous?"

"Of that _boy._ " Even in her sleepy state, Elsa pulled off a fantastic sneer. " _Opal_."

"Olaf." I giggled.

"Whatever." She muttered, further annoyed by the familiarity in my voice. "He gets to be normal with you. Gets to live a normal life with him and his stupid cat instead of this bullshit we bring in."

Elsa opened her eyes finally, her speech becoming slightly clearer. "Are you dating him?"

Just like with Kristoff, I laughed in surprise, just quieter. "You're jealous of _Olaf_?"

There were a lot of ways I could've expected her to react. This was not one of them.

Her eyes narrowed, her lips tugged into a smirk. She abruptly tightened her grip on my hand, yanking it toward her body, pulling me closer. I felt my breathe hitch as she leaned in, her smirk growing wider. She stopped mere inches from my face, her hands now idly running patterns across the skin of my palms and wrists.

And just like that I could not _breathe_.

I could count every freckle on her face, every eyelash. There were forests growing in the irises of her eyes, dark and unknown and terrifying. The heat building in the pit of my stomach was urgent and aching. I despised every centimeter of space between us, and at the same time, was eternally grateful it was there.

There was a repeating mantra in my head, screaming at me to not move a muscle. Elsa grinned, and I fucking _knew_ she could see my discomfort. She leaned up on her elbow and over slightly, blanketing me with her hair as she pressed her mouth insanely close to my ear.

" _Are you_?"

"W-What?" My voice was shaking in a concerning way, but I couldn't hear it over the blood rushing through my ears. I felt a fire ignite under my skin, brushing every pore in the most frustrating way possible.

I just wanted to goddamn _touch_ her.

"Are you," She paused slightly, and I could hear the grin in her voice. There was something different about the way she sounded, too. It was lower, huskier, and absolutely dripping in possessiveness. "Dating him?"

I had to stifle a groan at the sound of it.

 _Just fucking control yourself, for Christ's sake._

"I-I don't- no- we're friends, I don't- _no."_

And she abruptly pulled back, detaching every part of her body from me except her _damn fingertips_ , still idly tracing over the skin of my forearms. She grinned an incredibly broad, cheek splitting smile. _"Good."_

Her hands dropped and she turned to her other side, so that I was facing her back. I felt like I was inside of an oven, producing enough heat to set the blanket on fire.

 _What the fuck just happened?!_

My breathing was nearly in pants, my blood pounding through me so hard that it was starting to give me a headache. I squirmed uncomfortably.

It's not fair to get someone _ridiculously_ aroused so easily; I don't understand who decided that Elsa should get to be all of the amazing things she is, along with being the single most seductive person I had ever met in my life.

I stared at her back for a long time, twitching with the urge to run my fingers through her hair, down her spine, over her _hips_ -

I sucked in a sharp breath and rolled over to my other side, squeezing my eyelids together and curling into a ball.

I didn't sleep for hours.

 **/**

When I woke up that morning I felt a few different things.

1.) I hot weight pressed _very_ pleasantly against my back.

2.) A long, smooth leg hooked around my own, possessively.

3.) A heavy arm lazily crossed over my ribs.

4.) Blonde hair resting across the side of my neck.

And last but not least.

5.) A smug grin directed right at my face from a few feet away, and a sense of ridiculous satisfaction permeating the air.

" _Sooooo..._ "

"Not one word, Kris." I mumbled without opening my eyes. If I pretended I wasn't awake I could enjoy this a lot longer. I snuggled backward into Elsa's body a bit, and I swear I felt her grip around me tighten slightly. "No one goddamn word."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Oh my god I am so so sorry about how long this one took, I completely lost track of everything the first week of college, and then I came home for the weekend and I was going to get it done here, but I hadn't seen my friends and their broke asses had somehow gotten liquor and so I don't even actually remember what happened. But you guys do not care to know that, and it is also a shitty excuse so, my bad.

This chapter was

So. Goddamn. Hard. To. Write.

Not only did hardly anything important happen, but I also botched the elsanna "take it slow" thing. I've never experienced anything like it before, and (obviously) I completely failed at trying to keep a relatively slow pace with Anna and Elsa's relationship, even though they're nowhere close to dating yet, I just enjoy the tension. I can't help it, every time I write this I want them to be fucking on the sly so bad and it's ridiculous. I'm really sorry if that fucks up the story for you guys, I want it to be good, but I literally do not know how to write Anna and Elsa _not_ together.

Anyway, I am sure this is fraught with errors and stupidity, and I need y'all to call me out on it. Tell me what's wrong, what I can fix. I know I ask that a lot, but it's 'cause I really need the help to make it better.

Also, you people that are reviewing and following and favoriting, I fucking love y'all. Like seriously. Tell me your names, we'll go get married right now, I swear, on me.

Anyway, y'all are sooooooo awesome and I love you, and I hope you liked this chapter. I'll try to get the next one out before we all die of old age.

Much love XOXO


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